Baseball and ghost stories may be inexorably linked thanks to Field of Dreams. The film itself, however, is perhaps less of a ghost story in the traditional sense, the ghosts in question are benign and friendly to the characters in the film, there are no spooky paranormal happenings and, disappointingly, Kevin Costner is never leaped upon by the headless zombie corpse of Ty Cobb.

The only other link between baseball and the paranormal that I can think of comes in an episode of the X-Files that I watched when I was about 14-years-old. Some consulting of the Wikipedia reveals that the episode, The Unnatural, centres around a minor league ballplayer in Roswell who is, in fact, an alien. The episode was written and directed by David Duchovny and the only thing I really remember from the episode is the final scene of Mulder and Scully hitting baseballs in a batting cage. One thing that caught my eye in the episode synopsis is the very first sentence – “A group of white and black baseball players play a game in Roswell, New Mexico. One of the players, Josh Exley hits a towering foul ball.”

Why is the towering foul ball important? It probably isn’t at all in the plot of the episode but it got my mind thinking back to something that I read on Josh Wilker’s mindblowingly good blog Cardboard Gods. Wilker’s self-imposed task is to write a blog entry of every baseball card he collected as a child. Sometimes the entries are a nostalgic look-back on a players career, other times they invoke American literary gods such as Raymond Carver and I feel like I should rise to my feet and applaud, not just at the reference but how it can be linked to the baseball card and onto wider and deeper issues with such skill and craft.

Anyway, in October 2006 Wilker wrote about a 1979 card of Athletics outfielder Joe Wallis. The story itself is interesting but, over two years later, in December 2008 a comment was left by someone called Champ Summers that merely said “I dug up a must-read for the Joe Wallis fans of the world” and provided this link.

The story concerns a minor league ballgame that took place in Wickers Field, Key West, Florida on August 6th 1974 between the Key West Conchs and the St. Petersburg Cardinals. The scene is set beautifully:

By the time the first pitch was thrown, twilight and fog had joined in a slow dance above the islands, creating a backdrop that St. Petersburg left fielder Ernie Rosseau still describes as “eerie.”

In the bottom of the first inning Joe Wallis, then playing for Key West hits a deep fly ball off Cardinals pitcher Lonny Kruger that looks to be heading into the glove of  right-fielder John Crider. The account of what happens next comes from Eric Lincoln of the St. Petersburg Times:

Crider ducks. He has lost sight of the ball. Jimmy Williams, the Cardinal second baseman, races to his assistance. He ducks, placing both hands over his head for protection. The center fielder, Claudell Crockett, is on the scene with his hands held outward as if to say, ‘Well, where the hell is it?’

[Gary] Templeton, now the manager of the Gary SouthShore RailCats, was playing shortstop for St. Petersburg that day. He was among those who drifted toward the play to provide assistance — or try to.

“I took off running for it because I thought I had a shot at it,” Templeton said. “It was like a popup to right center. Next thing I know, everyone’s running around like chickens with their heads cut off.”

Wallis, meanwhile, doesn’t hear an umpire call the ball foul, and he sees no one make a play, so he tentatively makes his way around the bases.

He crosses home plate with nine frantic Cardinals flapping their wings behind him.

Nobody ever saw the ball come down.

Wallis was then awarded a home-run, the umpires decided that since no-one had caught the ball and Wallis had rounded the bases then that was the only ruling they could make. People apparently searched the area all evening and couldn’t find the baseball, it seems all the players were agreed the ball should have come down in right field, maybe the wind blew it further away? Gary Templeton has a different explanation: “It had to be a UFO that got that ball”. Other explanations in the article range from the ghost of Ernest Hemmingway pocketing the ball to Key West’s proximity to the Bermuda Triangle. The rest of the article is absolutely worth reading and it also sprung many comments with even more possible explanations.

Josh Wilker revisited the Joe Wallis story on February 2nd of this year, coming up with no new explanations, but asking:

How do you survive a mysterious and beautiful event such as that? How do you not slowly unravel and grow increasingly less able to exist in the mystery-stripped world of adulthood?

Wilker’s ruminations on adulthood were not solely inspired by Wallis and the supernatural flyball – he was also thinking of J.D. Salinger and, more specifically, the bridge that Salinger created between childhood and adulthood in his character Holden Caulfield.

Joe Wallis, like Salinger, became a recluse later in life. In the novel Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella the central character tracks down Salinger and takes him to watch a ballgame at Fenway Park to ‘ease his pain’. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that this, rather strangely, brings us right back to Field of Dreams, which used Shoeless Joe as it’s basis.

All of this, as is often the case with ghost stories, leaves us with more questions than answers – most pertinently being what happened to the fly ball? Is it just a myth built up over time? I’d also like to know who is the mysterious Champ Summers, who dropped in over two years later on a story about Joe Wallis to fling us headfirst into this world of the paranormal, American literature, recluses, a blockbuster movie and baseball? Whoever he is, I’m grateful for the tangents that he’s enabled my imagination to fly down and for a good story.

Amusing baseball story aficionados will recall easily Bernazard’s firing last year for challenging players on the Binghamton Mets to a fight after removing his shirt, Sleuth Omar’s subsequent ‘investigation’, and the whole nasty shitstorm that followed when Minaya accused a journalist of “lobby for player development position”.

Harper’s story is, basically, that Bernazard became a man obsessed. Men obsessed can be driven to crazy things, we know this, literature is piled deep with examples. Who can forget Jay Gatsby’s obsession with Daisy Buchanan? The characters of Gravity’s Rainbow‘s obsession with the bomb? (OK, I’ll stop now). Turns out Bernazard’s obsession was a little more leftfield (zing!) than the literary creations of Fitzgerald and Pynchon, it was hitting the ball to the opposite field.

“Sources say Bernazard, who oversaw minor-league development, was so insistent on players hitting the ball to the opposite field that minor leaguers were scolded for pulling the ball, sometimes even when they got a hit.”

If Harper’s “sources” are to be believed, Bernazard put the entire impressionable Mets front office and coaching staff under his bizarre spell and his Luddite approach to hitting was soon adopted as an organisation-wide philosophy. The Mets entered Spring Training in 2009 conducting drills whereby hitters were required to hit 80 straight curveballs the other way, the only problem being that major league pitchers don’t often throw you 80 straight curves (I know for a fact that Dontrelle Willis can mix in a low-90s heater off the plate, for example). Then lots of Mets got injured and they had to play guys who weren’t very adept at pulling the ball, hitting the ball straight or doing much involving putting bat on ball (although Jerry Manuel did seem keen to use their bunting abilities plenty of times), never mind hitting it to the opposite field and the whole season was abandoned as a bad joke sometime after the All-Star break. Damn you, Bernazard!

In all seriousness, though, when I read this article my initial reaction was ‘what a load of shit’. Typical Mets, I thought, blaming last season’s shambolic endeavours on a man who already is a villain in the New York media, and is no longer in camp to defend himself. The whole thing stank of fairly poor spring training propaganda – the bad guy’s gone now, we’re gonna start hitting home runs this year and not follow his stinking hitting philosophy.

So sure was I that I was right, it didn’t even occur to me to check the numbers and see if the Mets really were hitting the ball the other way a lot last year. Thankfully, the internet is a wonderful place and amongst it’s many pages resides The Hardball Times and John Walsh. Walsh did the numbers work and found the Mets sat 26th out of 30 major league teams in pulling the ball. He then looked at the five players who hit 150 or more balls in play in ’08 and ’09 (Tatis, Castillo, Beltran, Church and Wright) and discovered:

4 out of 5 saw a significant decrease in the fraction of balls pulled. And the other guy (Castillo) rarely pulls the ball anyway. So, maybe the Mets really were drinking Bernazard’s Kool Aid. Weird.

Weird is one way of looking at it, certainly. One would be almost tempted to label it downright shambolic that the Mets accepted the word of Tony Bernazard as gospel and set about his patently ridiculous methods of hitting and received the all-too-predictable results. The more I think about this the more crazy it is – it may well be Bernazard’s flawed approach to hitting that hampered the Mets last year and we can all rejoice once more that he’s gone, but the same idiots who not only listened to Bernazard but set about implementing his madcap ideas are still there today. I almost want to remove my shirt and fight some teenagers in exasperation.

To put a wrap on my posts about this past exciting week I’ve decided to pick a Caribbean Series All-Star team.

1B Kevin Barker (DR). Barker was a favourite of this blog from the first day with his wild approach to hitting and his game winning homer in game one. As the days went on it became apparent that Barker actually had a very patient approach at the plate and was in fact one of my favourite breed of ballplayers – a three true outcomes guy. The Big Woofer finished the series with an OPS of 1.188.

2B Pablo Ozuna (DR).  Miguel Abreu’s line of .389/.421/.556 makes him marginally more qualified with the bat (particularly in SLG) but Ozuna wins this battle thanks to his sterling defensive work. In a series that was marred by errors Ozuna was consistently good at second base.

3B Vinny Castilla (MEX). Juan Francisco has a good shout at this position, but for the sheer story of 42-year-old Vinny and his walk-off hit against Venezuela on day four it’s the Mexican who takes this one. Castilla’s OPS of .865 also puts him ahead of Francisco (.800).

SS Ramon Santiago (DR). Angel Sanchez of Puerto Rico may well disagree but here’s why I picked Santiago: although Sanchez hit .409 and Santiago hit .267; Sanchez’s .409 was 9 hits in 22 ABs, Santiago’s 4 hits in 15 ABS (this is why small sample sizes are misleading); however, Sanchez drew not one walk and struck out 4 times, whereas Santiago drew 3 and struckout once. Santiago hit more doubles (2 to Sanchez’s 1) and seemed to play better defence. Basically, I could have picked either player and working on this small sample size it’s really hard to say who is actually better but the fact that Sanchez couldn’t draw even one walk from 22 at-bats lost it for him. Maybe that’s just me.

LF Jesus Feliciano (PUR) The series batting champ put up a line of  .481/.517/.630, I don’t see that there can be much argument with this one.

RF Fernando Martinez (DR) The series MVP joins the batting champ in the outfield. The only minus against Martinez is his defence, which looked a bit shaky at times. At other times however, he was able to run down balls just fine so maybe the corner outfield position will suit him better. He also suffers from Sanchez-Syndrome and didn’t draw a walk in any of his 19 ABs.

CF Chris Roberson (MEX). The Robe pulled off some highlight-reel defence which made him the best centre-fielder in the series, in my opinion. He also hit an acceptable .333/.333/.407. and that’s all the persuasion I needed.

C Edwards Guzman (PUR). Catcher was probably the hardest position to chose a stand-out player for as there were some good performances but no greats. Guzman was the catcher with the best OPS .728 so he gets it.

DH Raul Padron (VEN). Venezuela, as a team, hit .195/.256/.275 in the series. The one bright spark was Raul Padron who hit .300/.300/.450 and 25% of his teams home runs (ok, he only hit one but it looks more impressive that way) which leaves you wondering where Venezuela would have been without him. The only mystery was why his manager kept batting him 7th in the lineup.

Pitchers: Nelson Figueroa (DR). His complete game gem in day two wins him the role of starting pitcher, he gave up three hits, struck out 8 and looked totally dominant.

Mario Santiago (PUR). In his two starts Santiago put up an ERA of 0.75, struck out 11 and gave up 7 hits on 12 innings, he also only issued one walk.

Raul Valdez (DR). Two starts, two wins, lead the series in strikeouts, issued a mere two walks and was on the receiving end of only 9 hits.

Brodie Downs (PUR). Just because he’s awesome and I’m the manager, OK? Also, everyone else who won the NTIG player of the day award made the team so Downs has to be involved.

Dario Veras (DR). Veras will trot out of the bullpen to do the closing as he picked up 3 saves in this series without give up a hit or a walk. Interestingly, he was one of only 3 pitchers who had a save in the series.

That just about does it for my Caribbean Series posts. I can honestly say it’s been loads of fun, both watching the series and writing about it. Maybe these players will one day join the lists of greats who have previously played in the Caribbean Series, we’ll almost definitely be seeing some of them in the majors this coming season.

Thanks for reading. Back soon with some more MLB-flavoured stuff as we get closer to Spring Training.

For full boxscores I suggest a quick click right here.

Some interesting things that happened

- Fernando Martinez went 2-4 with a walk and an RBI to up his series average to .348, good enough to see him crowned series MVP.

- Jesus Feliciano finished the series as the batting champ, putting up .481

- Kevin Barker had his best day yet as he went 2-3 with two walks and an RBI. He also legged out a double which is something I’m severely disappointed I missed.

In the end it was the Dominican Republic who were crowned champions, having dominated from the start. Puerto Rico beat Mexico in the day’s early game, meaning the DR had to win against Venezuela in order to avoid a Monday tie-breaker game. This they duly did, putting up four runs in the top of the first, eventually winning 7-4 and leaving the Venezuelans with a disappointing 1-5 record.

I’ll be back tomorrow for my final Caribbean Series post and my hamfisted attempt to select an All-Star team.

And the Big Woofer hit a home run!

Brief Recap of Day Five

Mexico took on the Dominican Republic in the early game and I used my superb logical thinking skills to miss the first four runs, all coming in the first inning. I gambled on the hitters taking a while to settle in and nipped to the shops to buy some food. On coming back I found I’d missed two two-run homers, one for either side and one of which being a big dinger into right-field by NTIG favourite Kevin Barker. Imagine my disappointment.

Mexico’s hitters must have been rubbing their hands after that explosive start in the top of the first. Unfortunately for them that was all the runs they were to get that day as they were kept quite by DR pitcher Heath Phillips who went 7 innings, 3 hits and 7 strikeouts. The Dominican offence continued to tick around nicely, scoring in all but the 2nd, 6th and 8th innings. Powerhouse prospects Juan Francisco and Fernando Martinez followed Barker’s lead and went yard in the 4th and 5th innings respectively as the DR completed a 7-2 win.

The victory puts the Dominican team on the very precipice of overall victory with a 4-1 record going into the final day and meant that Puerto Rico had to beat Venezuela in the night game to keep the competition going into the final day.

Thankfully, for the neutrals, Puerto Rico did exactly that completing an impressive 7-1 win over the hosts who look increasingly hapless as the days go on. Twins prospect Danny Valencia hit a solo homer in the fifth and was followed two outs later by Jesus Feliciano who continues his hot tear through the Caribbean Series. It was the fifth inning that was to be the turning point for the game as Venezuela failed to find any answer to the Puerto Rican offence and the game was over as a contest as Puerto Rico added another 3 runs in the sixth inning.

This result means that if Puerto Rico can beat Mexico in the early game today then the Dominican Republic must beat Venezuela in the nightcap. If they don’t then the series goes down to a tiebreaker on Monday night.

Good Kevin Barker fact

The Big Woofer’s OPS for the series is now 1.188. His batting average is .250.

All-Exciting NTIG player of the day!

It was a tough one today. In lieu of any other obvious candidates standing out, except possibly Jesus Feliciano, I’m going to give it to to:

Puerto Rico pitcher Brodie Downs!

Downs pitched well yesterday, he had more walks than strikeouts (3:2), admittedly, but he did take a no-hitter into the 5th inning, which is about that time when you start wondering quietly to yourself. Downs then gave up a hit (one hit!) and was then removed from the game.

Most of all I want to give the player of the day award to him because I’m now a big Brodie Downs fan after I googled him and found this article. And this quote:

‘”I was just rearing back and throwing the crud out of the ball. Definitely a good time,” Downs says. “Beer drinking afterward. It was one of those playing-for-the-love-of-the-game kind of leagues.”‘

It seems pitching four innings of no-hit ball in the Caribbean World Series is just another chapter in the strange baseball journey of Brodie Downs.

Thanks for reading, back tomorrow with what could be the final day.

Brief Recap of Day Four

Day four is essentially the start of the second round of games in the Caribbean Series, the teams have all played each other once now and Leones del Escogido of the DR came into the day looking like the clear favourites with a perfect 3-0 record.

The DR soon found themselves in trouble, however, giving up three runs to Indios de Mayagüez of Puerto Rico in the first inning. The Puerto Ricans scored three runs in the first inning yesterday and went onto win the game. The tactic seems to be working well for them as they did the same today and improved their record to 2-2. The game was characterised, though, by the home plate umpire having one of the stingiest strike zones I’ve ever seen. It wasn’t a good day for pitchers as neither starter got past the fifth inning. The DR looked to be making another comeback, answering Puerto Rico’s three run first with runs in the 3rd and 5th before Puerto Rico put up another 3 runs in the bottom of the 6th and tacking on a seventh run in the seventh inning for good measure.

Jesus Feiciano, playing centre field and leading off for Puerto Rico, is someone I haven’t given a lot of blog-time to so far this series but the Mets farmhand* had another good day, picking up two hits to bring his series average up to .444.

Despite the loss the DR will still be the fancied team coming into the final two days of the series, although if the Caribbean Series has shown us anything it’s that nothing is impossible on Margarita Island.

*it seems about 75% of the players in this competition have spent time in the Mets organisation at some point

Onto the nightcap now and (it seems like I say this every day) but this was the closest, best played game of the series so far. The hosts Leones del Caracas, looking to overcome the disappointment of Freddy Guzman literally stealing the game from them the previous day, took on Naranjeros de Hermosillo of Mexico. The Venezuelans excited the home crowd early on, putting a run on the board in each of the first two innings including a Michael Ryan solo shot in the second. Both pitchers looked good, however, and runs were hard to come by after that. Jose Sanchez of Venezuela racked up 8 strikeouts and no walks whilst giving up 5 hits for one earned run. Mexico’s Juan Delgadillo was a picture of consistency, despite the early set-backs, going 8 inning for 6 hits and 2 earned runs with 3 K’s.

Mexico fought their way back into the contest, levelling it in the 6th and had the chance to win it in the bottom of the ninth, loading the bases with one out before Saul Soto ground into a double play to take it to extra innings. The Mexicans took their second chance in the bottom of the tenth, however. With two men on and one out 42-year-old veteren Vinny Castilla singled home the walk off run with a shot to left field to break Venezuelan hearts for the second night in a row.

Barkerwatch

Since no recap of the CWS would be complete without a Kevin Barker update, here we go. Sir Swingalot was back to his game one form yesterday, going 1-4 for with two strikeouts. The Big Woofer wasn’t hanging around, although he did hit a nice single to up his series average to .222.

All-exciting NTIG player of the day!

So, onto the player of the day, and it would be tempting to give it to 42-year-old Vinny Castilla for his heroics in the tenth inning. In spite of this the award for today goes to:

Mexico centre-fielder Chris Roberson!

In a series that has seen more than it’s fair share of errors, it was nice to finally see a game that featured solid defensive play on the whole. No one was more typical of this than Roberson, who showed earlier in the week his impressive range in the outfield and cannon of a throwing arm and continued the head-turning performance last night. Roberson made a Willie Mays-esque basket catch over his head to keep Venezuela off the board and was solid all night. He also treated us to some heads-up baserunning when he took second on a lackadaisical throw from the Venezuelan right-fielder on what should have been merely a single.

Back tomorrow with more!

Brief Recap of Day Three

As we reach the halfway point in the series Leones del Escogido of the Dominican Republic look the best set to take glory as they remain undefeated, thanks to some base stealing heroics from Freddy Guzman.

Before home plate was but a glint in Guzman’s eye, though, the day kicked off with Indios de Mayagüez of Puerto Rico chalking up their first win against Naranjeros de Hermosillo of Mexico. The Puerto Ricans put up three runs in the first inning, which proved to be enough to see them through to victory. The heroes of the day were DH Michael Hernandez and first baseman Randy Ruiz, who batted in two runs. The game was notable for it’s pitching matchups which saw Australian Travis Blackly, representing the Mexican team, take on Bill Pulsipher – once of the Mets ‘Generation K’ era of pitchers in the ’90s. A terrible start for Blackley was tempered slightly by the time he got into the third inning and found his rhythm, however his manager was quick to come and get him when he found himself in trouble again in the fifth, he did finish the day with 5 strikeouts, however. Pulsipher only clocked up two k’s but went an inning longer than Blackley and allowed only one earned run on five hits.

The real treat of the day came in the nightcap which saw the Dominican Republic’s Leones del Escogido take on those perpetual night owls Leones del Caracas of Venezuela. The pitching matchup saw the Dominican’s veteran Nerio Rodriguez take on 22-year-old Atlanta Braves rookie Jose Ortegano in what was probably the best game of the series so far. Both pitchers put up impressive lines, the guile and craft or Rodriguez was matched by the livewire mechanics of Ortegano early on before Oscar Salazar hit a two-run homer off Rodriguez to give Venezula the lead. The two pitchers carried on putting up zeros for two more innings before Rodriguez’s night was done after five. Ortegano, despite issuing three free passes was through five innings without giving up a hit. Just as everyone’s mind started to wander to the inevitable Freddy Guzman singled to centre field and the spell was broken. Ortegano left the game without retiring another batter and the Domincan’s pulled a run back in the sixth.

In the bottom of the seventh the Dominican Republic’s Ramon Santiago singled in Pablo Ozuna with two outs to tie the game up, Freddy Guzman moved to third on the play and set up the most exciting moment of the series so far. With two-outs, men on first and third and young slugger Juan Francisco at the plate the runners took their lead off the bases. The Venezuelans seemed more concerned about Santiago stealing first but the deciding run of the day came as Freddy Guzman broke off third, slid in under the tag from catcher Carlos Maldonado, stole home and put the Dominican Republic on their way to a perfect 3-0 record.

Big Woofer breaks loose

As I’m sure we all hoped, last night saw the return to the Dominican lineup of Kevin ‘The Big Woofer’ Barker. It seems the first game of the series saw a kind of eagerness to swing at nearly everything that was unrepresentative of Barker. Last night Barker put on a more than passable impression of Adam Dunn as he demonstrated himself to be a veritable ‘three true outcomes’ guy. The Big Woofer finished the day with two walks and one hit-by-pitch leaving him with only one official at bat. Fans of the big guy’s swing will be relieved to know he struck out swinging in that one.

All-exciting NTIG player of the day!

In a day that could potentially see the decisive move from the Dominicans there seemed to be candidates for player of the day springing up all over the place. At one point it looked like Jose Ortegano was looking good for a no-hitter, Pablo Ozuna once again demonstrated more impressive glove work at second base for the Dominican Republic and Gregorio Petit no doubt slept happily after recording his first game of the series where he didn’t commit two errors, or indeed any errors at all. There can only really be one player of the day, though, he scored the winning run in the serie’s first come-from-behind win and he did it in heartstopping style:

Dominican Republic centre fielder Freddy Guzman!

Stealing home at any time is impressive any way you look at it, stealing home late in a game is daring, stealing home late in a tie game with 2 outs is verging on the dangerous but he did it anyway and it only bloody worked! Guzman’s audacious steal is indicative of the sort of edge-of-your-seat play that we see on a daily basis in the CWS and there’s still three more days of it! Roll on tonight and, in the interests of an exciting series, hopefully someone can challenge the Dominican dominance and maybe another team will see one of it’s players win a NTIG player of the day award!

Thanks for reading, see you tomorrow!

Brief Recap of Day Two

I’ve noticed that Venezuelan fans aren’t really that bothered about watching the early game, being as it is that Venezuela always play in the night game. The stadium looked to be mostly empty as the two teams took to the field in game one, save for small groups of fans that included some Mexicans wielding four-foot rattles and one gentleman who had died his beard the colour of the Mexican flag. Fantastic to the extreme.

Those who stayed away missed undoubtedly the best pitched game of the series so far. Nelson Figueroa of the Dominican Republic’s Leones del Escogido exerted more of less complete control over the Naranjeros de Hermosillo of Mexico hitters, finishing with a complete game 3 hitter, for one earned run and 8 strikeouts and no walks. The only blight on his copy book came in the 8th inning when he gave up a solo home run to Mexican second baseman Carlos Valencia. As in the first game yesterday the hitter’s keenness to swing didn’t harm Figueroa’s pitching line much but this was a sublime pitching display from Figgy, who could well see time in the New York Mets pitching rotation next year.

The night game between Leones del Caracas of Venezuela and Indios de Mayagüez of Puerto Rico produced a much more raw and erratic brand of baseball altogether. Neither starting pitcher demonstrated the dominance of Nelson Figueroa, although Jason Simontacchi of Venezuela looked comfortable early on, racked up 5 strikeouts before getting into trouble in the 5th inning and leaving the game. Unfortunately, for Venezuelan shortstop Gregorio Petit it was another error strewn game as he committed two throwing errors to take his series total up to four. That’s an average of two a game! Whether Petit continues his tenure at short in Venezuela’s game against the Dominican Republic tonight remains to be seen.

The game wound up in a 5-2 Venezuela win to get the hosts off to their first victory of the series. Puerto Rico did threaten in the game and loaded the bases twice, although they failed to score on both occasions. In one spectacular play Venezuela turned a 9-6-2 double play to quash Puerto Rico hopes in bizarre fashion.

What Happened to the Big Woofer?

Alright, recap over, I imagine you’re all wondering how yesterday’s player of the day Kevin Barker got on for the Dominican Republic. Brace yourselves Barker fans, the Big Woofer didn’t see a single pitch yesterday. The sultan of swing was replaced at first base yesterday by Brayan Pena, who went 1-4 for a strikeout. At first I was disappointed not to see Barkers haphazard swing at everything approach for a second day, but I soon realised that his manager Ken Oberkfell must surely be resting the Big Woofer for the Dominican’s game against Venezuela tomorrow night. It had been a big day for Barker, a game winning home run and being named the inaugural NTIG CWS player of the day all in the space of a few hours. A sensible move by Oberkfell to sit the big slugger and let him be fresh for the big lights of Margarita Island on Thursday. I fully hope to see the Big Woofer swinging again tonight.

All-exciting NTIG player of the day award!

Despite some excellent hitting from Raul Pedron of Venezuela; Pablo Ozuna and Fernando Martinez of the Dominican Republic and Angel Sanchez of Puerto Rico there can only be one winner of this award on day two:

Dominican Republic starting pitcher Nelson Figueroa!

It’s really easy to root for Figgy sometimes. As a Mets fan the fact he’s not always that good does not detract from how fun it is to watch him mix in his curveball, changeup and slider alongside his fastball and makes it all the more fantastic when he puts in a good pitching display like yesterday.

Stay tuned for reviews of the remaining days of the CWS right here on Number Two is Grit. I’m also going to compile a CWS All-Star team when the series is over. Thanks for reading, now here’s the Beastie Boys in honour of NTIG player of the day – Brooklyn-born Nelson Figueroa.

*possibly

Brief Recap of Day One

This is my second year watching the CWS and pretty much the first thing you notice from watching the games is that these guys don’t like to hang around. Indeed, to quote Baseball Prospectus’ profile of Paul Lo Duca, on the whole they hit like they’re double parked. As a result the games tend to go by pretty quick and pitchers put up some impressive numbers. This became fairly evident yesterday as proceedings got under way in Game One between Leones del Escogido of the Dominican Republic and Indios de Mayagüez of Puerto Rico. In a game that ended up in a 2-1 Dominican win, Puerto Rico’s Mario Santiago pitched 7 innings for 3 hits, 2 runs, 1 earned, 1 walk and 8 strikeouts. He was matched by Dominican pitcher Raul Valdez who’s line ran 6IP, 6 hits, 1 run, 1 earned, 0 walks, 8 strikeouts. It would rather misrepresent the game if I was to say either pitcher had particularly dominant stuff, what they did have was some pretty funky breaking balls that seemed to keep the hitters guessing right until the end and made for a pretty tight game. In fact, the contest may well have been even closer were it not for the scattering of errors that we saw from both sides.

The nightcap, between Naranjeros de Hermosillo of Mexico and Leones del Caracas of the host nation Venezuela, proved to be much more of a slug-fest, ending 7-2 in Mexico’s favour. I’d like to pretend I could give you the intricate ins and outs of this game, unfortunately I fell asleep somewhere in the 5th inning. What I did see, however, was the Mexican team put up seven runs thanks to some average pitching and some downright diabolical fielding from Venezuela. Mexico’s Chris Roberson caught the eye with some nice work in the outfield to help throw out two Venezuelan baserunners at home plate when the score was 2-0 to Mexico.

Don’t I Know You?

Undoubtedly one of the best thing about the CWS is seeing players you recognise from the Major Leagues. This year brings up a real peach in former Colorado Rockie, 42-year-old Vinny Castilla; now playing 3B for Mexico. Castilla was a member of the ‘Blake Street Bomber’ Rockies of the mid-late 90s, hitting 40 home runs in ’96 and ’97 and 46 in ’98. Castilla was coach of the Mexican World Baseball Classic team last year, now he’s back playing 3B. I’d love to know the reason behind this although I’d guess it’s probably no more complicated than Vinny still likes playing baseball, which is superb!

Aside from Vinny the rosters are mainly made up of players that currently, or have in the past, spent time in various Major League organisation’s minor league systems. The most notable players seem to be on the Dominican team which boasts luminaries such as Detroit backup shortstop Ramon Santiago, Mets #1 prospect Fernando Martinez and Flordia’s livewire infielder Emilio Bonafacio amongst it’s ranks.

All-exciting player of the day award!

So, with day one confined to the CWS history books it’s time to decide who the Number Two is Grit player of the day is. In a day that threw up some superb pitching from the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico and saw Mexico defeat favourites Venezuela on their home patch I’ve gone for a man who, I feel, embodied the ethos of the CWS:

Dominican Republic first baseman Kevin Barker!

Barker ranked high on my awesome-o-metre for two reasons. First of all he’s a 6’2 195ib white guy who looks faintly ridiculous in this environment. Second of all, and much more brilliantly, Barker – from what I’ve seen – tries to hit every pitch for a home run, which is a characteristic I can’t help but love. Barker’s swing for the fence ethos was eventually vindicated when he finally connected sweetly and hit a pitch into the left field bleachers for a solo home run, breaking a 1-1 tie which proved to be difference between the two teams. Barker is currently a free agent, he spent 5 season in MLB with the Brewers, Padres, Blue Jays and Reds. During this time he hit .249/.328/.354. According to the Wikipedia he also hit his first pitch for the Blue Jays for a home run off Josh Beckett. The more I watched the game the more I thought Barker was only really a moustache away from being one of the most likeable players in the CWS. I’m hoping over the coming days some kind of nickname will emerge for him, at the moment I’m thinking something along the lines of ‘Boss Dog’  or ‘the big woofer’. If anyone has any suggestions please let me know.

Until tomorrow, adios!

Joseph Jason Putz. According to the Wikipedia “affectionately known as Big Guy”, likes throwing pies in people’s faces, enters the game to “Thunderstruck” by AC/DC. In 2008 he pitched 46.1 innings for the Seattle Mariners due to missing time thanks to a bone spur injury. The following offseason he was traded to the New York Mets. Probably be wise to give the guy a physical before you sign him, make sure he’s OK since he’s a pitcher and he’s had an injury. In his elbow. Which he uses. For pitching. According to JJ:

‘“When the trade went down last year, I never really had a physical with the Mets,” said Putz. “I had the bone spur (in the right elbow). It was discovered the previous year in Seattle, and it never got checked out by any other doctors until I got to spring training, and the spring training physical is kind of a formality. It was bugging me all through April, and in May I got an injection. It just got to the point where I couldn’t pitch. I couldn’t throw strikes, my velocity was way down.”’

Right. Seems Omar Minaya and the rest of the Mets organisation: a) didn’t bother with a medical examination before making the trade or b) just plain forgot. Either option is quite likely.

Mets fans always thought JJ was rather underachieving once he made the move to Flushing. Some put it down to having to adjust to the set-up role, having been a closer in Seattle. Turns out Mets fans should have known better.

Minaya and the front office’s real master stroke, though, came in how they decided to handle the situation once it became clear Putz was injured. Over to JJ again:

‘“I knew that I wasn’t right. I wasn’t healthy. The toughest part was having to face the media and tell them that you feel fine, even though you know there’s something wrong and they don’t want you telling them that you’re banged up.”’

Oh yes indeed. It seems that rather than issue a mea culpa over the whole injury debacle the Mets thought it would be best just to send the earstwhile reliever out to the media with one instruction: don’t tell them you’re injured. Which, by following the front office’s thinking to it’s logical conclusion, ammounts to “pretend you’ve been throwing average to poor stuff and getting booed off because you’re a crap pitcher, not because we didn’t have the common sense to check if you were injured before signing you”.

As a one-off incident this is at best stupid. At worst it shows an attitude almost verging on the disdainful for a man who you pay to play baseball for your ballclub. Unfortunately, it’s not a one-off incident. It comes less than a month after the Carlos Beltran kneegate PR disaster (the peak of which saw Mets assistant GM John Ricco make a conference call to reporters denying the Mets front office had any knowledge of Beltran’s surgery before Beltran claimed he’d OK’d it with Omar Minaya before going ahead with the proceedure) and you really have to wonder just how much longer this last-days-of-the-Nixon-White-House of an organisation can lurch from crisis to crisis before someone other than a minor-league taunting executive gets the boot.