Posts Tagged ‘Mike Scioscia’
We lost Greg Montalbano in 2009. Kelly O'Connor took this photo of him at the Lowell Spinner's Alumni Dinner in January 2009 (Used with permission)
Just a note of warning: This entry is long and although I want it to be all-encompassing, I’m sure I’ve missed few things. But this is pretty much how I remember 2009!
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2009 was a fairly eventful year for me personally in both the good and bad categories. Sadly more bad than good which is probably why I initially avoided writing any kind of recap for the blog. But while I was writing my recap of the Red Sox decade (and I’ll have that up as soon as I finish it!) I realized I should probably write something about the final year of the decade as well. So here goes.
January: I started blogging at WEEI.com. Looking back on my entries for this month, I’m genuinely surprised I found so much to write about (it didn’t stop new readers from complaining that I was writing “drivel” though. Should have been a sign!). Personal highlights in January: The ongoing Jason Varitek saga, the signing of Rocco Baldelli, Kyle Snyder getting picked up by the Mets, the beginning of the MLB Network and Jim Rice finally gets voted into the Hall of Fame!
February: Bombshell of bombshells for MLB. Selena Roberts exposes Alex Rodriguez as a steroid user. The MLB Network cuts its teeth on this one and, unlike Peter Gammons and ESPN, doesn’t disappoint with their coverage. Unafraid of losing access to the players (again, unlike Peter Gammons or ESPN), they go full throttle on this story and introduce us to their newest addition to the network: Bob Costas. I wrote a lot about MLBN in 2009 and a bit about Sl*ppy. I would have written much less about the two, most likely, had this story not broken. Personal highlights in February: The Caribbean World Series on MLBN (I was genuinely surprised at how much I enjoyed it!), Truck Day, pitchers and catchers reporting and Joe Torre’s book about the Yankees.
Chapter 10: The End of the Curse. When asked by Regis Philbin the other day what happened to the Yankees over the past 7 years, Joe responded “The Red Sox happened”. That will go down as possibly my favorite Red Sox/Yankee-related quote ever.
March: I spent a lot of March writing ‘rants’ and pointing folks toward baseball-related Twitter accounts. Must have been resting up for April! Personal highlight in March: The WBC. I spent a lot of time ranting about players getting hurt and how I didn’t care who won only to be totally sucked into it by the end.
April: The beginning of the season! Lots of liveblogging and picking up more WEEI readers (with mixed results!). Personal highlights in April: Going to both Sox/Mets exhibition games at CitiField, attending Opening Day at Fenway and high-fiving JD Drew and Hideki Okajima during their introductions, being at Fenway for the walk-off win against the Yankees, Jacoby Ellsbury stealing home on Andy Pettitte, Tim Wakefield taking a no-hitter into the 8th inning (thus setting the table for his All Star selection), watching Jonathan Van Every pitch while Javier Lopez floundered in right field then eventually getting DFA’d (watched on television, not in person), the Patriots Day game where Luke Scott got all pissy and some idiot fan threw a ball onto the field and “Toeing the Rubber” getting nominated for a New England Sports Blog Award in the category “Best Red Sox Blog”. Relatively speaking, a great month except for one thing that really hit the baseball world hard and made the month miserable: the death of Nick Adenhart.
But I don’t cry because of any personal connection I have to Nick. I don’t cry because a future baseball star is dead. I cry because parents lost a son today. Many people lost a friend. And the world lost someone who could have potentially been great. Not just at baseball but at life. No drunken ass has the right to take that away from us. This doesn’t “put things into perspective” for me. I hate when people say that. I’m forty years old for God’s sake, I’ve seen enough death and tragedy in my life to have proper perspective, thank you. I don’t watch baseball and think that what goes on down on that field is life or death and more important than anything else in my life. I’d argue that most sports fans, even if they act like they have no perspective, have exactly that. Baseball is an outlet to forget about the realities of life for a few hours.
May: Getting to see Daniel Bard’s first Major League appearance (after having seen him pitch in Pawtucket) was very special. Finding out that Jerry Remy was recovering from cancer was sad and a little frightening. Personal highlights in May: Seeing Kyle Snyder with the Bisons at Pawtucket, Javier Lopez signing Steve the Ferret’s “Lopez” jersey (also at Pawtucket), Aubrey Huff fistpumping to Joba Chamberlain, appearing on “The Baseball Show” on Comcast SportsNet, crying (literally crying) over Big Papi’s first home run of the season, getting to meet metsgrrl and “paloozaing” with a huge group of people I love during the Mets/Sox series at Fenway.
Yesterday was an amazing day spent with friends (most of whom I haven’t seen in quite a while or hadn’t met yet!). There are many amazing tales to tell (but not here!) – my favorite being when our friend Susan noted that we could start singing “O Canada” except no one knows the words past “O Canada!”. Standing up and singing loudly and proudly, a group of us proved her wrong. That our serenade didn’t get us thrown out still kind of surprises me.
June: This month brought us the end of interleague play, the end of Jonathan Van Every’s season (thanks to knee surgery), Tim Wakefield hitting ten victories with his torn labrum, John Smoltz making us all wonder why we were so excited to have him on the team while Dusty Brown makes his major league debut. Personal highlights for June: Derek Lowe returning to Fenway with the Braves, Nick Green’s walkoff against those same Braves, sitting in Fenway during a mind-numbing rain delayed game that turned into a loss for the Sox (okay, that one is a lowlight, really) and the Sox capping off 7 wins in a row against the Yankees with an eighth.
Let's hope Papi gave Torii some pointers on coming back in the ALCS! (Photo courtesy of Kelly O'Connor/sittingstill.net and used with permission.)
Before last night, I can’t remember the last time I got that genuinely worked up over a baseball game that didn’t involve the Red Sox. Mike Scioscia replacing John Lackey with Darren Oliver (to face Slappy, Teixeira and Matsui!) could have gone down in baseball history as the worst managerial decision in an LCS since 2003. Thankfully, aside from Lackey possibly having already set all of Oliver’s (and/or Scioscia’s) things on fire, no long-term harm was done.
There seem to be a few Yankees fans reading my blog. One or two occasionally email me and actually have nice things to say (well, usually not NICE but at least they just want to discuss baseball not how fat, stupid, ugly or mean I am!) – last night I received an email from one, “Mike in Paramus” (I asked Mike if he minded my mentioning him today)…Mike wanted to know if I was taking “great joy” in Nick Swisher’s struggles in the ALCS since I had “dissed” him earlier this season by saying I didn’t think he was an all-star.
I like Nick Swisher. He’s one of those players I truly believe plays because he loves it and tries to get as much fun out of it as he can. I hate that he’s with the Yankees but they offered him a job and why wouldn’t he take it, right? I DID say earlier this season that I didn’t think he was an all-star…but he was definitely an important part of what got the Yankees to the post-season this year. In spite of that, I’m not reveling in his struggles. Hell YES I’m enjoying the Angels taking it to the Yankees and I hope to see more of the same Saturday night – but it actually annoys me a bit that so many in New York are choosing to stick Swisher’s head on a stick and parade it about so that the fans have their pound of flesh. (Incidentally, “Mike” thinks Swisher should be benched. Me? As long as it helps the Yanks lose, I’m good with keeping him in!)
So while the Phillies rest up, the Yankees and Angels have to head back to New York for at least one more game. In thinking about the World Series, it occurred to me that since 2000 all three teams in the hunt have won a World Series so there isn’t that much drama (for me, anyway) surrounding them. I have no emotional attachment to the Phillies, I admittedly can’t stand the Yankees…so that leaves the Angels. If I have to pick a team that I’d genuinely enjoy watching win it all this year – and these three are my only choices, I’m going with the Angels. After the ALDS, I didn’t think I’d be able to root for them. But watching them during this LCS, well, I like most of the guys on the team and their fans seem to be the least of the three evils…and I honestly can’t deny that Nick Adenhart is on my mind. I’m not a fan of the “they have to win because something bad happened to them” way of thinking, but it certainly has attached itself to me – at least it did last night. Watching last night I kept thinking about the team running over to his likeness on the wall in the park after they made it into the playoffs and the idea that the Yankees could have made it to the World Series in front of him upset me greatly. Sure it’s still a tough road for the Angels – winning two in a row in the Bronx won’t be easy – but I think they can do it. More importantly, I’m hoping they can do it. Everyone needs to root for something positive, right? It isn’t as much fun to root AGAINST a team as it is to root for them.
So Saturday night I won’t be rooting for the Yankees to lose (as I’ve been doing each of these games) I’ll be rooting for the Angels to win! Two more games, fellas, two more games!
