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.

After that game I took a gander at Moyer’s career statistics and was dumbfounded to realize not only that he had been around forever but that for at least a half-dozen or so years in the late 1990s and early 2000s he was a pretty damn good pitcher.

Would you have pegged Moyer as having 267 career wins? Even over 24 years I didn’t realize he was that close to approaching the 300 plateau that sort of artificially puts starting pitchers in an elite class.

I’m not saying the guy is a Hall of Famer or anything. His 4.24 ERA and 511 homeruns allowed, his appearance in just one All-Star game and his lack of a Cy Young Award win illustrate that he was far from a dominant pitcher at any point in his career. He’s never been considered the best in the game and it’s going to be hard to make a strong case for his enshrinement, especially when there are guys like Bert Blyleven and Jim Kaat who are still on the outside looking in at Cooperstown.

But if this is the end for Moyer, he does deserve the respect due to someone who may not have been the most talented player out there but who, through guts and guile, found a way to get it done for a long damn time. He also comes off as one of those quiet guys who represents himself with class and dignity.

If he does decide to attempt a comeback I wish him luck. If not, I wish him a healthy retirement and the satisfaction of a job well done.

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.

I think there are a few reasons for this. First, I’ve made no secret of the fact that I think it is ridiculous for this exhibition game to determine home field in the World Series. When fans vote for the rosters it should be an exhibition, not a game that determines who hosts a potential Game Seven.

I know my feelings on that are not unanimous, but it still remains ridiculous to me that a game potentially decided by an at-bat between a Pirates’ closer and a Royals’ batter in the late innings could decide who hosts a deciding World Series game between the Yankees and the Phillies, hypothetically. And I think the majority agree.

Second, if you are going to institute that ridiculous rule, which was passed in a panic after negative publicity surrounding an All Star Game tie several years back, then at least remove the equally ridiculous requirement that every team get a representative in the game. This isn’t grade school and it isn’t socialism. If you must turn the game into a gimmicky way of determining homefield, at least make sure the truly best players are at the game.

Finally, after making sure the best players are there, keep them in the game. Take 1965, for example. Hank Aaron batted five times. Several others batted four times. Juan Marichal started for the National League and pitched three innings. The game didn’t have anything like World Series on the line. But the guys played for pride back then. Despite being an exhibition, it was more than an exhibition.

I didn’t watch last night’s game but I read the accounts this morning. Alex Rodriguez and Infante were the only position players who didn’t play. David Ortiz had to run for himself and, sure enough, he was forced on a base hit to the outfield.

And so it goes. Washington’s closer, Matt Capps, got the win. Los Angeles closer Jon Broxton got the save. Yankees starter Phil Hughes took the loss. The National League’s dominant pitching led to its first win in the All Star Game since 1996, when I was a junior in college. By most accounts the 3-1 game was actually a pretty decent contest.

Yet the fewest number of people ever cared enough to turn on the television to watch it. Take a hint, Mr. Selig. Gimmicks are not the answer.

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.

He could push the Rangers, who started strong last year only to fade and barely miss the playoffs at the end of the season, into the postseason. But it’s the type of financial and personnel risk that teams not located in New York, Boston, Los Angeles and maybe Philadelphia are usually hesitant to make.

Smoak started slowly when he got the call to the Major Leagues early this season. But he’s picked it up of late and is considered a top prospect.

Allegedly, according to LaVelle E. Neal III during an interview on KFAN-AM this evening, the Rangers and Cincinnati Reds were the final two teams in the running for the rental services of Lee. Actually it surprises me a bit that either team was a finalist in this deal for the same reasons.

On the other hand, maybe I should just revel in the fact that the second half of the season, at least for now, still means something. The Yankees are still baseball’s best team. Had they acquired Lee they would have had a rotation of him, CC Sabathia, AJ Burnett, Andy  Pettitte and Phil Hughes.

With Javier Vazquez in the rotation instead of Lee, it’s already one of baseball’s best bought rotations. Plug in Lee for Vazquez and, one through five, that rotation, matched with the offensive firepower that team always manages to buy for their lineup, and you could pretty much have handed them another World Series trophy this afternoon.

So thank you Seattle. And thank you Texas. Without having had a ton of time yet to study the rest of the players in this deal I am still confused that you both were willing and able to make this deal work.

But I do appreciate your keeping me interested in how the rest of the season will play out.

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.

The problem with my watching the game with those folks was that I would rather have been boarding my first flight of the day, which was from New Orleans to Chicago O’Hare International Airport. But weather issues in Chicago led to a delay. It was originally supposed to be a couple hours, though it was later un-delayed. Or at least the delay was shortened. We were able to get on the plane for Chicago and, surprisingly, takeoff from New Orleans without sitting on the tarmac (I feel bad for the folks who had the same scheduled flight four hours before me – they boarded something around three hours after their scheduled time and then sat on the tarmac for awhile before actually taking off).

This leads to my second thumbs up for the day – to the guy at the information desk working, I think, for the city of Chicago. I didn’t catch his name. I should have. But he helped me three different times with a smile and a ton of patience – which I can’t imagine was easy after dealing with hundreds upon hundreds of people trying to figure out how to get to their destinations on a day in which Chicago went through several morning and afternoon storms.

Ultimately, when I landed at O’Hare, my connecting flight to Minnesota had been canceled. As was the one I was hoping to catch by flying stand-by. And I narrowly missed booking a flight on Southwest Airlines when someone beat me to the reservation while I was filling out the registration forms for the low-fare carrier’s website.

So I was stuck in Chicago. Which leads to Accolade Number Three – and my tie-in to baseball.

The third time I asked my friend from the city of Chicago for help I queried him about how to best find a hotel. He offered me a pink sheet of paper with a web address and a phone number. I logged on to the site I was directed to and within just a couple minutes I had booked a room. It wasn’t the most convenient site. It was in Schaumburg, at the Wingate by Wyndham, some 20 miles or so outside of Chicago proper. But it was affordable and easy to book, and the guy I called at the hotel’s front desk from the airport gave me easy-to-follow directions to catch the shuttle.

So, here comes the biggest prop. About 30 minutes later, I got a call on my cell phone from the guy at the Wingate. His shuttle was running late, caught in the horrendous rush hour traffic. Not to worry. He booked a stretch limo for me and eight or nine others that would pick us up and take us to the hotel.

When we got here, he and another happily checked us in. My luggage, I said, was somewhere between New Orleans and Minneapolis. Could he suggest a place where I could buy a change of clothes? No problem. Kohl’s was but a few blocks away. The hotel could shuttle me there if I wished (I walked – I needed the exercise after several hours cooped up at the airport).

What about dinner (okay, finally getting to baseball)? No problem, he said. He handed me my room key and pointed at a photo of the Fox and Hound, where patrons of the Windham could get 20 percent off their meals by showing the key.

I went from Kohl’s to the Fox and Hound, taking care of my biggest concerns. While at the restaurant, I was served by an attentive waitress, I engaged in conversation with a couple other decent guys, I was served a few strong drinks and, most importantly for this blog, I watched a half-dozen ballgames on several big screens around the perimeter of the building.

So, what’s my point? I don’t travel a ton. But I’m out on the road enough where I’d like to start building up a collection of places where I can go if I want to watch a football or baseball game. So, if you are a frequent traveler and you want to make sure you can watch your favorite team, where do you go?

Or if you grew up watching your hometown team but left for work or school, where do you go to keep make sure you don’t miss the game? Please, do me and your fellow sports fans a favor and provide some insight on where we can go in the event a day like mine happens again anytime soon.

So, in closing, apologies to those who think this post is nothing but a self-serving rant. I admit, I needed to vent about what was a frustrating day. But I do also think us sports fans can help each other out in the event that such days happen to me or any one of us again. I hope you’ll indulge me.

And, so, a final thanks to those who made a sometimes frustrating day pass more easily. And thank you to those who will make future travel experiences pass more enjoyably. I appreciate your help too.

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.

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.

The only blemish on his line was a homerun hit by Delwyn Young, who later made one of the few appearances he’ll ever make on ESPN’s Baseball Tonight to talk about how you approach hitting a rookie stud like Strasburg. Basically, from the looks of it, his answer should have been walk up to the plate, close your eyes and swing.

The coverage of the Strasburg event was a bit laughable. It was the first and probably last time this decade where the Nationals and the Pittsburgh Pirates achieved headliner status on the same day. Both ESPN and MLB Network, which interviewed Pirates rookie Neil Walker about facing the new hurler, did wall-to-wall coverage. It had to be the most publicized debut in ages.

But as I said, Strasburg proved worthy of the accolades. I didn’t get to watch the entire game, but the highlights were impressive. Even more to my liking was the postgame interview, during which Strasburg appeared calm, collected and reasonably humble. He talked about the adrenaline he felt and the support of the crowd, about how this was just one game and about how his goal this game, next game and down the line will be to keep his team in the game and give his teammates a chance to win.

It’s been the lifetime of the franchise since the Nationals have had a real chance to do so on any kind of regular basis. As skeptical as I was that Strasburg could live up to the hype he entered pro baseball with, he appeared Tuesday as though he will be up to the challenge.

Let’s keep in mind that he’s going to have to live up to these expectations for the next 10 to 15 seasons. But this was a very, very impressive debut.

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?

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.

“I was so nervous I didn’t know what to do,” Galarraga told Sutcliffe and . “My first reaction was to smile.”

Kudos to Galarraga. He handled the disappointment with far more class and tact than many fans did. A Facebook page titled “Jim Joyce Sucks” had nearly 1,600 fans just about an hour after the game.

Wikipedia had to freeze Joyce’s entry to keep people from vandalizing it.

Troy from West Virginia had a bit of a meltdown after Joyce blew the play.

I guess these reactions in the heat of the moment are understandable. Baseball history should have been made.

Others got a bit more ridiculously out of hand. WBRU called it the “worst non-steroid tragedy in baseball’s history.”

Really? It was a bigger tragedy than when Ray Chapman was killed after getting hit in the head by a pitch? Bigger than the earthquake during the 1989 World Series? Bigger than when Don Denkinger blew a call that may have cost the St. Louis Cardinals the 1985 World Series?

ESPN’s announcers on Wednesday night’s coverage of the St. Louis-Cincinnati game were slightly less dramatic but no less irritated by the call.

The fans “were cheated out of a big big part of history,” Sutcliffe said.

“Somewhat unforgivable,” added O’Brien.

Again, I can understand those feelings in the heat of the moment. I have no idea what Joyce saw. Maybe it was a slight bobble Galarraga had just before getting control of the throw from Miguel Cabrera. Who knows. It was a terrible call.

I’ve been critical, as have others, of umpires inserting themselves into the limelight and getting into the faces of batters and managers arguing calls. But let’s keep in mind that Joyce has been an umpire for more than 20 years and has worked some of the game’s biggest events during those two decades. He’s called two All-Star games and two World Series. He had a bad night. He made a bad call.

A very bad call.

But that doesn’t make him Satan.

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.

Griffey also was regarded as a truly decent guy. In one of the few controversies to arise during his career, two unnamed players told the Tacoma News Tribune that Griffey missed an opportunity to pinch hit earlier this year when he fell asleep in the clubhouse. His teammates defended him aggressively, locking out the reporter who broke that story for at least awhile.

The linked Seattle Mariners press release includes several Mariners officials giving him his well-deserved due. There’s little to no question in my mind that he will be a first-ballot Hall of Fame selection in five years. He was untainted by the steroid allegations that have hampered his peers such as Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire. And even with the injuries his numbers clearly put him among the all-time greats.

A discussion on one of the local sports radio talk shows raises a more interesting question: Is Griffey the best professional athlete to never win a championship? Karl Malone in the NBA, Dan Marino in the NFL and Bonds, among others, are under discussion as his competition from the other major sports.

But Griffey has to be right up there toward the top. Your thoughts?

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 Ticket (5-29-2010) "Unused"

      US $9.95  (1 Bid)

      
 End Date: Friday Sep-10-2010 21:01:19 PDT


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      Roy Halladay Perfect Game Mini-Mega Ticket - Phillies

      US $19.90 

      
 End Date: Sunday Sep-12-2010 11:23:45 PDT


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      Roy Halladay Perfect Game Mega Ticket - Phillies

      US $79.90 

      
 End Date: Sunday Sep-12-2010 11:23:45 PDT


        Add to watch list
    
  

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.]