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The Philadelphia Phillies will soon put Jamie Moyer on the disabled list with a sprained ulnar collateral ligament in his elbow. For many pitchers these days that injury means a year on the shelf recovering from Tommy John Surgery. For the 47-year-old Moyer, however, there is a strong likelihood that it could mean the end of his career.

When I first saw news of the injury I cringed. And the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Matt Gelb confirmed Thursday that there is at least some chance that if the injury is, in fact, serious enough to require the reconstructive surgery that Moyer may instead decide to hang it up.

So why the fanfare? Moyer has pitched for nearly two-and-a-half decades for … seven teams, if I counted right. And the last half-dozen or so he has hardly been great. But he is a gamer. He got out of the gates slowly this year, creating speculation that his spot in the rotation and perhaps on the Phillies’ roster this season might have been in jeopardy. He turned things around, though, and in May became the oldest pitcher ever to throw a shutout.

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Seems like no matter how hard Commissioner Bud Selig tries to build interest in the Major League Baseball All Star game he still comes up short.

There was a lot of hype leading up to the game this year, with debate over whether Omar Infante belonged in the game and whether rookie phenom Stephen Strasburg got screwed when he was left out.

But at the end of the day, despite all the hoopla, the game’s broadcast produced the lowest television ratings in history. Back in the mid-1960s and 1970s, the game used to produce ratings scores in the mid 20s and share ratings in the mid-50s.

(A ratings point represents one percent of the total households in the United States watching a given show. Share measures the percentage of television sets in use tuned into a program. So 20-plus percent of households with televisions used to watch the All Star Game and more than half of the televisions in use during the game were watching it.)

In 2002, the All Star game slipped to single-digit ratings for the first time and those figures have not returned to double digits in the years since. Tuesday’s game, according to the Los Angeles Times, drew just a 7.5 rating for a paltry 12 million average viewers. Read the rest of this entry »

I love that the New York Yankees did not get Cliff Lee from the Seattle Mariners.

I love even more that the Yankees were livid with the Mariners because they thought they had a deal and then Seattle pulled it away from them at the last minute.

But I am confused about how the Texas Rangers, bankrupt and under the operation of Major League Baseball at the moment, can take on more than a million in salary for a pitcher they likely will not retain after the season while giving up rookie hitting phenom Justin Smoak as part of the deal.

Don’t get me wrong. I understand that Lee is an ace. And I understand that Texas is in first place. Read the rest of this entry »

Today was a helluva day in sports. Wimbledon participants Nicolas Mahut and John Isner are tied 59-59 in the fifth set of their match, setting all sorts of all-time records, including longest match played. The United States scored a goal in extra time against Angola to go from fourth place to first place in their group in World Cup early-round play. The win set up a Sweet Sixteen matchup against Ghana.

I spent most of my day at two airports.

Yes, today largely sucked. But I want to hand out some accolades to people who made it suck less than it could have. And then yes, I will tie this post back into baseball.

First thumbs up goes to the couple dozen people watching the U.S. play Angola at a bar at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport this morning. I’m not a huge soccer fan by any stretch. I don’t pretend to understand the game like I do football or baseball. And many of the passengers watching the match obviously were the same – they were excited with every scoring opportunity the U.S. had, even if they didn’t understand how they earned those chances. It was a lot of fun watching the waning moments of the matchup with a bunch of fired up people I’ll probably never see again.

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A friend and former colleague, best known these days by his blogroll name of Randball, must be on a baseball trip to Milwaukee. He has tweeted tonight that Milwaukee Brewers fans view games at Miller Park as nothing more than an opportunity to buy $7 beers. Mr. Randball also calls Brewers fans the “worst fans ever.”

I would argue that Philadelphia Phillies fans, who in just recent weeks have had a fan intentionally vomit on an 11-year-old, had a fan tasered for running onto the field and then the next night had another moron run onto the field in copycat fashion, have to at least be in the mix for worst fans (though Philadelphia fans certainly are more knowledgeable than most).

I don’t know who the best fans or the worst fans are in baseball. Do you have any thoughts? If so, I’d like to hear them.

Florida Marlins outfielder Mike Stanton had three hits (though one came on a questionable call in the ninth inning where it looked like he forced the runner in front of him) and scored two runs in his Major League debut. He definitely looked like he belonged, watching footage on MLB Network.

But the rookie who stole the show on Tuesday was the highly acclaimed franchise savior for the Washington Nationals, Stephen Strasburg.

The phenom, who entered professional baseball under controversial circumstances when his agent, Scott Boras, threatened to hold him out unless he got $50 million to sign, was every bit the stud he was advertised to be. He tossed seven innings, striking out 14 and walking none in getting his first MLB win. Read the rest of this entry »

Coming into the 2010 season, there had been a total of 18 perfect games thrown in Major League Baseball history. That’s not just the modern history, either–we’re talking back to the days of Lee Richmond pitching for the Worcester Rubylegs back in 1880–a total of 18 games, out of probably some 350,000+ games played (no idea if that number is right, but my quick guesstimation put it at about 300,000).

The Major Leagues once went a stretch of 34 years (from 1922 to 1956) without seeing a perfect game, and as recently as the 1970’s, went an entire decade without seeing one.

During the 1990’s, there was an all-time high of four perfect games, including just the second time that there were perfect games pitched in back to back years (David Wells in 1998, David Cone in 1999; prior to that, Jim Bunning in 1964 and Sandy Koufax in 1965 were the only two to throw perfect games in back to back seasons).

So far in 2010, there have been two official, and one (as of yet) unofficial perfect game thrown.  In fact, these three games happened in less than a month (Dallas Braden on May 9, 2010; Roy Halladay on May 29, 2010; Armando Galarraga on June 2, 2010).

For those of you keeping track at home, the 1990’s had a record four perfect games, while the…2010’s(?) has essentially three perfect games less than three full months into the first season of the decade (and let’s not start with the whole “the decade doesn’t start until next year crap–I’m going by the first three digits of the year).

Add Mark Buehrle’s perfect game from July of 2009, and that’s four in less than a full year.

So what’s causing the rash of perfect games?  Is it a fluke? Is it the watering down of talent due to expansion finally catching up to hitters, as it seemed to with pitchers?  Are pitchers just getting better?  Are performance enhancing drugs–and/or the testing/banning of them–somehow coming into play? Is MLB finally making up for juicing balls after the strike shortened season in an attempt to lure fans back to the ballpark?

I really don’t have any idea what’s behind it–so I thought I’d put it out there to see if anyone has any other thoughts on what might be leading to this, whether or not the trend will continue, and if so if that means that the exclusivity of such a game will start to wane as more pitchers are able to throw them?

You’ve likely all seen it by now. Jim Joyce missed an out at first base that cost Armando Galarraga and the Detroit Tigers a perfect game Wednesday night.

It was a terrible call. Horrible. The fans were cheated. Galarraga should have had the third perfect game in Major League Baseball in less than a month. But come on now. Joyce, by most accounts is a pretty good umpire. He did not miss the call on purpose. He is not Satan. And he immediately owned up to the mistake after the game. Let’s give him credit for that.

The Twittersphere is abuzz with reports that Joyce is distraught about the blown call. [Update: Joyce admitted to the botched call after the game and clearly felt like crap about it.]

This is being blown a bit out of proportion. Even Galarraga sounded resigned and accepting of his fate more than upset. He acknowledged that he spoke with the Joyce after the game. “He feels bad,” Galarraga says in a conversation with ESPN broadcasters Rick Sutcliffe and

He adds that Joyce “kind of” apologized to him. Sutcliffe gave props to Galarraga for how he handled the call, keeping his composure, not getting into an argument with the umpire and immediately retiring the next and final batter of the game.

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Ten Golden Gloves, seven Silver Sluggers and one in-game nap is enough for Ken Griffey Jr. The all-time great Seattle Mariner probably stayed on a season too long. But he’s a clear Hall of Famer and Wednesday he decided that his career had gone on long enough.

Griffey had been brought back to Seattle last year as a veteran presence and stuck around for one final season this year as the Mariners made several aggressive moves in the offseason aimed at contending for a championship. But the Mariners got out of the gates slowly and one report indicated that he was going to retire or be released sometime last month.

He finishes 2010 with a .184 batting average and no homeruns. But he finishes his 22 year career with 630 homers and a .284 average to go along with the above-mentioned accolades. Throughout the 1990s he was regarded as one of the best – if not the best – players in the game, though his stats would undoubtedly have been even better if he had not spent most of 2002-2004 on the disabled list.

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The Florida Marlins got beat by Roy Halladay and the Philadelphia Phillies on Saturday night. Not just beat, either–Halladay threw the 20th perfect game in Major League Baseball history, and the second already this season.

Of course, since the game was in Florida, there were only just over 25,000 fans in attendance for the game–about 8,000 more than for an average Marlins home game.

So what to do with the other 13,000+ tickets that weren’t sold (and probably were never even printed)?

Well, if you’re the money grubbing Marlins, there’s only one logical solution–sell them. At face value.

That’s right, for between (based on published ticket prices) $12 and $300+, you to can claim that you were there to witness history.

Or turn around and try to resell the ticket on eBay–try to get a Halladay autograph, package it with a Halladay trading card, make a nice little plaque, and turn yourself a nice little profit.

  

    

    

      Roy Halladay perfect game mint season ticket 5/29/10

      US $32.99  (4 Bids)

      
 End Date: Sunday Sep-05-2010 5:49:15 PDT


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      Phillies * ROY HALLADAY * Perfect Game * Full Ticket

      US $23.99  (0 Bid)

      
 End Date: Sunday Sep-05-2010 8:03:05 PDT


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      (1)ROY HALLADAY PERFECT GAME TICKET STUB 5/29/10 *RARE*

      US $9.99  (0 Bid)

      
 End Date: Wednesday Sep-08-2010 10:29:45 PDT


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As an occasional collector of sports memorabilia, this seems…just dirty to me. As a fan, had I attended the game, I could see keeping that ticket stub, and making some sort of collectible. And I could see a truly passionate fan (of Halladay or the Phillies) buying some sort of memento. But in either case, having a ticket that was actually used would mean 100x more than having something printed after the fact.

What’s next, just print up an extra 50,000 tickets with May 29, 2010 on them, and sell them in the fan shop?  Maybe Commemorative Replica Tickets?

It would be slightly more palatable if the Marlins printed something extra on the ticket, indicating it was not used on game day–but the story makes no indication of that, and I doubt it would happen.

Which means, once again, the Marlins have found a way to sully MLB tradition, and the way the game should be conducted, in my eyes.

[Note: It's possible this is a regular thing with many teams in MLB, and I've just not heard of it before--if that's the case, just add it to the list of reasons for why I don't think MLB will ever reclaim the #1 spot in my heart for sports, even if the NFL does manage to screw things up by having a lockout/strike in the coming year.]