Posts Tagged ‘Brett Myers’

Photo of Cole Hamels taken by Kelly O'Connor/sittingstill.net and used with permission.

Well last night was pleasant enough, eh?  Seeing Burnett leave before even getting three innings under his belt was sweet but seeing Chase Utley tie Reggie Jackson’s World Series home run record was sweeter.  All Utley has to do is hit another home run before this series is over and we can say goodbye to “Mr October”.  I approve greatly of this.

EDIT:  Well, I have to take back the whole Brett Myers being an asshole rant since the story is coming out that it didn’t happen.  Of course that could be spin so’s not to make Myers look like the ass I believe him to be (regardless of whether the confrontation happened)…oh well.  It was fun typing out “Brett Myers is an asshole” a few times, anyway!

In spite of the assholiness of Myers, I’m still holding out hope that the Phillies can pull out two more wins.  They need to just take them one game at a time and focus on the game at hand, right?  No getting ahead of yourself and thinking about game 7.  Game 6, with Pedro pitching again at Yankee Stadium against a short-rested Andy Pettitte is quite enough to focus on right now.

I know it’s a long shot but I still think they can do it.  And, because baseball keeps pulling me back in, I’ll definitely be watching tomorrow night!

Photo of "Gonzi" (oh Tito. You and your nicknames.) courtesy of Kelly O'Connor/sittingstill.net and used with permission.

Very happy with two wins in a row.  Less happy about the rain pouring down on us right now that will, almost definitely, cancel tonight’s game (if for no other reason than I’d like to see Beckett get one more game in before the playoffs begin) but what are you going to do?

Two things that made me happy yesterday:

*  CC Sabathia got his hat handed to him by the Rays, hopefully cementing the Cy Young Award for Zach Greinke (or at least making sure he put himself out of the running for it)

*  Someone found my blog by Googling “Brett Myers is an asshole”

*  The asswipe who videotaped Erin Andrews was arrested.

1 thing that made me angry yesterday:

*  The Indians using Alex Gonzalez for target practice.  If we lose him for the playoffs I might have to find a Cleveland fan and punch them.  (Okay, probably not.  But only because I don’t know any Cleveland fans.)

I’m actually going out to enjoy this lovely day (hey I dig the rain as long as I’m not sitting in the middle of a park getting soaked) and then tomorrow, rain or shine, I’ll be at Fenway for the final game of the regular season.    If it’s possible to be happy and sad at the same time, that’s where I’ll be tomorrow.

Haven’t used any Kyle Snyder photos for good karma in a while. Kyle struck out 7 in his latest appearance with the Buffalo Bisons! (Photo by Doug Benc/Getty Images North America)

Well that didn’t go as planned.

Thanks to one of Wake’s patented “this inning is going sour quickly and we don’t have a guy up in the bullpen yet” innings and the fact that the team couldn’t get men in scoring position to actually make it home, Sox break the Blue Jays 9-game losing streak.

Can’t have any hard feelings about Wake. Guy’s been a horse thus far. The hitters, on the other hand, I can fault (not-so) happily.

But let’s focus on the positive. How about Daniel freaking Bard, eh? Five consecutive strike outs of the 8 bats he faced? Quite impressive, kid, quite impressive.

Last night, Amalie Benjamin wrote on Twitter: “Not a lot of glory in being the team that ends another team’s nine-game losing streak.” I have to disagree. Well, maybe not “disagree” but I don’t think she is looking at it the right way. Do the players look at each other and think “Ugh, we just lost to a team that lost 9 in a row” or do they think “The Law of Averages caught up with them and we were unlucky enough to be the team they were playing”? To lose 10 in a row is huge. To lose a dozen in a row even worse. Did anyone think the Blue Jays were going to lose 12 straight games? I didn’t. I wanted them to but I didn’t think it would happen.

As I wrote in response to that Tweet, the odds of the Sox winning the next 2 just went up. It’s unfortunate that the loss came on a night when the Yankees won, placing them a half game ahead of the Sox to, temporarily (!) own first place but what are you going to do?

One note about the Yankees game: Pettitte came out of the game after getting himself in trouble. Two on, no out and a 2-0 count to the batter he was facing. He looked fine walking off the field but it gave the relief pitcher as much time as he wanted to warm up. There was no visible injury and when he threw his last pitch he didn’t grab himself or limp or wince. He hurt his back on Monday and, according to Peter Abraham, had been fighting through pain up until Girardi took him out. Also according to Abraham, Pettitte says he’ll definitely make his next start. I don’t know…sounds suspiciously like the old Roger Clemens trick of suddenly being injured to get out of a game. Although Pettitte was winning when he left his game. It sounds more like Girardi wanted his struggling starter out of the game before it got out of hand and pulled the “he’s injured” card so his reliever could get more warm-up time on the mound. Part of me wonders why Tito didn’t try this (hey, Wake has had a bad back in the past). “Oops he’s hurt! Let’s take him out and get someone else in there quickly!” Another part of me is very glad that Tito’s mind doesn’t work like Joe Girardi’s. Of course, I feel differently if it turns out Pettitte misses his next start and is genuinely hurt. For now, I don’t believe it for a second. Girardi got a fresh arm in there to take as many wam-up tosses as he needed and stopped what could have turned into a really ugly inning. Good managing or just more slimeballiness from Girardi? I suppose a little of both.

And the first one to tell me Pettitte wouldn’t be involved in such chicanery needs to be reminded of this.

Speaking of PED users: Bud Selig has decided that he’ll have to give some thought as to what to do if Manny Ramirez gets voted into the All Star Game. Seriously, I’d like to find every idiot who voted for him and slap them. Give your vote to a player who hasn’t been caught cheating. What a novel idea! And you can come back with “For all we know they’re ALL cheating” and that is very well true, but I don’t care. I’m not out to hang witches. If a player has been caught or admits to using then he cheated. I’m not pointing to every player who does well and say “He MUST be cheating!”. That’s bull. We KNOW Manny cheated. THIS YEAR. Why vote him in to the All Star Game when he is serving a suspension for that instead of playing baseball?

A quick shout-out to schadenfreude:

Brett has decided to have surgery,” added Amaro. “And it’s likely we’ll be missing him for a significant amount of time. We don’t know how much time, but he has elected to have surgery.”

According to a team spokesman, Myers was unavailable for comment.

It’s sad when bad things happen to good people isn’t it? Oh wait…

The Sox and Jays play at 1:07pm EST! So nice to have a Saturday game played in the early afternoon. I had considered live blogging it but won’t be. Tomorrow is still a possibility – we’ll see how the stars align for it. Today Brad Penny pitches against Brian Tallet. For as much of a hard time as I’ve given Penny this year, he’s been pretty solid for the Sox. We don’t need a stopper today we need a STARTER. Someone to start the winning series! I’ll be thrilled with the Sox leaving Toronto having won 2 out of 3. But for that to happen, GOOD Brad Penny needs to show up today (along with a bunch of hitters who don’t keep leaving men on, thanks!).

Bronson’s motto? Don’t worry, be happy!

Randomly:

* Watching the game on MLBN at a local bar last night was an EPIC fail. Not because of the bar, though. The fellas at the Baseball Tavern really tried to hook us up. Unfortunately, Major League Baseball blacked out the damn game. I need someone to explain this to me. No outlet in New England was covering the game. The MLB.tv feed was the Cincinnati Reds. Why was it necessary to black out the game in the one region where people actually wanted to watch it?

* Add Brian Schneider to the ever-growing list of players I’ve inadvertently put the whammy on. You might recall that Brian is my backup catcher on my fantasy baseball team. Fortunately, he went from being “out indefinitely” to it, seemingly, now not being an issue. I await the cease and desist letter from Kyle Snyder.

* Bronson Arroyo gave up two home runs last night after giving up a walk before each one (Jed Lowrie and Chris Carter owned him). If you haven’t seen Bronson interviewed after a game since he’s been in Cincinnati, you’re missing some good viewing. His attitude is exactly the same whether it’s a spring training game or a regular season one. He actually laughed when talking about giving up the walks that led to the home runs. I was waiting for him to ask the interviewer if he wanted to join him on his boat.

* Why is Brett Myers allowed to get away with being such an ass? He beats on his wife in Boston and MLB (and many fans) seem to just forget about it. Now he has his not-quite four year old son Kolt (spelling courtesy of MLB.com) wearing a Confederate flag? I’m sure that made Myers’ African-American teammates feel all warm and cozy. Why not a swastika next time, Brett? “Redneck – and proud of it!”…nice way to raise the next generation, asshat.

* Derek Lee was asked, yesterday, to join the USA’s WBC team. Derek Lee has been sidelined all week with a sore right quad (way to do your homework, trainer for team USA). Let’s just say, Derek Lee didn’t mince words:

“I’m not going”

I wonder if that’s a direct quote or if it got cleaned up before it was printed? Lee’s injury isn’t all that terrible and he is expected to play for the Cubs today – but how hard up is Team USA when they start asking the injured guys to come play? Maybe I was wrong about Davey Johnson? Maybe he isn’t the bastard? Maybe it’s that rocket scientist they have as Team USA’s trainer??

* Also returning to his lineup on Friday is Dustin Pedroia. Of course, you can’t watch this game unless you’re at it. Man I can’t wait for the regular season, when we don’t have to search for the games.

* Adam Rubin reports this morning that Kyle Snyder has been reassigned to the minor-league camp. As much as this bums me out, I hope it means that he sees more time on the mound than he has recently with the big team. And now I can try and make plans for a Bisons/PawSox game or two!

…in spite of the fact that Brett Myers is a wife-beating asshole who also happens to be a liar.

Yet when Myers pitched the next day in Boston, he was alone. He heard the vicious chants. He says he was pelted by plastic beer bottles and trash when he warmed up in the bullpen.

Okay, raise your hand if you’ve ever seen a plastic beer bottle at Fenway Park. Put your hand down Myers, you POS.  No beer bottles in Fenway.  Nice try, though.

Honestly, though, I’m beginning to think his wife deserves him.

“We’re both pig-headed,” says Kim, who married Brett before a justice of the peace during the 2002 season. “But what people don’t know about Brett is how sensitive he is. I tease him about that. He’ll do everything for anybody, and he’s always tried to protect me.”

Yeah. I wish I had a husband who would protect me by dragging me down a street by my hair and slapping me in the face. Boy have I missed out!

I’m not sure what the most pathetic aspect of this story is: that Myers denies what more than one eyewitness say, that his wife is so wrapped up in the lifestyle that she accepts that kind of treatment or that, going along with the cowardice that is a wife-beater, Myers was going to BAIL on pitching in Fenway if the Red Sox won the ALCS:

But he couldn’t escape the fear of the Phillies’ possible World Series opponent. “I did not want to play Boston,” says Myers, 28. “If Boston had beat Tampa, I would have gone to (manager) Charlie (Manuel) and told him, ‘I don’t want to pitch in Boston.’

“I don’t ever want to pitch in Boston again.”

Because people in Boston know what you are, Brett. And you don’t like having to face reality, obviously.

What a man.

Edited to add this link from another story about Myers published today.

I’d never fired a gun in my life and, frankly, it was not on my bucket list. Myers didn’t care. He loaded a Glock 19 handgun. I squeezed off a few rounds and managed to hit the target.

Myers was not impressed.

He grabbed the handgun, held it sideways and began firing.

“That’s how the gangsters do it,” he said.

“You’ve been watching too many movies,” I said.

“This is a lot of fun for me,” Myers said. “I just like shooting.”

Well, that’s one way to make sure there aren’t any witnesses.

“Sometimes I like concentrating and seeing if I can hit the target,” he said. “Sometimes I just want to go Rambo-style – no focus, just hold the trigger down. Let it ride, see how much damage you can do to a target.”

Yeah, this guy’s just fine. No issues with violence at all. Nope. Nothing to see here.