River Ave. Blues figures out a way to blame Javy Vazquez for the Tuesday night loss by the Yankees.

By the way, do you think the Yankees ownership will listen to Brian Cashman in the future when he says he doesn’t want to sign a free-agent reliever?

Kerry Wood speaks about the hate mail received by African-American players and manager Dusty Baker during Wood’s time with the Cubs.

I actually got a letter like that once when I was at ESPN. Ken Griffey, Jr. was going for the record of consecutive games with a home run, and I calculated the odds of him reaching nine games was about the same as Joe DiMaggio hitting in 56 straight games in 1941. It got into a newspaper, and a few days later I received a letter at ESPN telling me how dare I compare Griffey to DiMaggio. It was clear the guy objected because Griffey is black. It never fails to amaze me this still goes on.

Nick at Nick’s Twins Blog expresses his frustration with the Twins, from the GM down to the manager.

With the injuries and poor performance they’ve gotten from their rotation, the Twins really have no business being in a playoff hunt this year. Yet, they are. They are within five games of first place with nearly two months remaining, because they play in a division without a single truly outstanding team, and despite their disadvantage in the standings they still remain in great position to come out on top due to an extremely favorable remaining schedule. Such opportunities do not come along often, but through inaction and inept decision-making the Twins are still managing to let it slide away.

He also speaks highly of Anthony Slama, a good relief pitcher in AA who appears to be held back because he walks batters. The Twins do a very good job of keeping their walks allowed low, but sometimes pitchers have other strengths that compensate for the walks. Salma has a very high strikeout rate and a very low home run rate, so it’s quite possible the walks won’t hurt him that much.

Really? Someone needs to tell Phillies fans not to panic after one loss?

What to do on a snow day.

Not everyone is happy with the Yankees signing Teixeira:

Still, I’ll just argue that I still think baseball needs a salary cap. It will never happen, but I love what it’s done for other sports like hockey and football. Yes, you can still have dynasties emerge, but it seems like everyone has a chance. Everyone will use the Tampa example of a team that is in a horrid market that has risen from the ashes. The problem is that it took the Rays years and years of wallowing in those ashes and getting tons of remarkably good draft picks in order for them to do their phoenix impression.
Listen, I know that it’s never going to happen. Selig and company would never want a salary cap and salary caps are initiated from frustrated owners. I just sometimes need to state the obvious. I hate the freaking Yankees and the system in baseball blows.

The system blows because it creates artificial markets in which a small supply can drive up the price of a player. Make everyone free agents from the time they graduate from high school to the day they retire and there will be no need for a salary cap and every team will have a chance at signing decent players. Unfortunately, that will never happen.

Geoffrey Lakings writes:

As everybody is aware Ike just blew through Houston bringing massive devastation and forcing both the Astros & Texans to re-arrange their schedules.
However, I was shocked and appalled to discover that the only ‘neutral’ site available for the Astros to move this weekends Cubs series to was Milwaukee – a team they are chasing by three in the NL Wildcard. How is this considered neutral?? Not only will the Astros have to contend with hostile Milwaukee fans, Milwaukee is also an easy drive up from Chicago for Cub fans. Here are the Astros, winners of 14 of 15 (closing within 3 of MIlwaukee in the Wild Card race) with fortunately a weekend home series to continue this momentum. Then Ike derailed not only this series but wreaked massive havoc around the Gulf states; Galveston, Beaumont, Port Arthur, Orange and of course Houston.
First the Astros make the World Series in 2005 and Bud Selig demands the Astros keep their roof open for their home games destroying much of their home field advantage. Now Bud Selig forces the Astros to play their home games in Milwaukee a team he once owned. Possibly some collusion here. The Rangers have an open date on Sunday so the Astros could play a game there, and in the article below their minor league team in Round Rock(the Express) offered to make their stadium available. Both of these sites would keep the Astros in Texas and make the games a little more like home games.
I cannot fathom how this horrid atrocity came to pass. Is Major League Baseball really about money and what Bud Selig wants rather than the teams who put the product on the field.

Some people thought the Cubs were given an easy schedule this year, as they didn’t need to face New York and Boston in interleague play. The Cubs winning the World Series this year would certainly be a good story line.
Much as I like to rip Bud, there’s probably a very good reason for this. The I’ve heard is that Milwaukee having a dome, they don’t need to worry about weather. The DBacks are at home, Tampa is at home tomorrow, and they probably want to keep it in an NL park, which leaves out Seattle, Toronto and Minnesota.

Bob Ford doesn’t care for Red Sox Nation:

The Red Sox, thanks largely to their streak-breaking championship in 2004, became cuddly, cute, popular, and attractive to great scads of casual fans who wanted to glom onto the gravy train.
There’s nothing cuddly or cute about a team with a $133 million payroll. You can’t be an underdog if you spend like the Kennedys. If the Red Sox – who struggled to draw one million fans under the penurious final seasons of Yawkey family ownership – were once a cold-water walk-up on Kenmore Square, they are now a gated compound on the Cape.
Oh, I know. The fans sing songs together and have other adorable rituals, and tend to overlook small things like the fact that Manny Ramirez is one of the most selfish, self-indulgent players in the game. Ah, c’mahn. He’s a Sawk.

The sure sign that the Red Sox have become too annoying is when people outside the northeast start rooting for the Yankees to win.
Red Sox Nation, however, is a truly remarkable phenomenon. Boston combined first rate marketing with deft team building to take Boston from a locally loved team to a national brand. Both on the business and baseball side, the management group should be admired for that, and other teams should try to emulate that success. Ford’s team, the Phillies, have a chance to build that kind of brand right now. Maybe create the HURH club, for Howard, Utley, Rollins, and Hamels. Instead of complaining, try beating them at their own game.

Defensive Indifference already had enough of Dusty Baker. The Corey Patterson signing put him over the edge:

Why the hell would you want a guy who had 80 extra-base hits in the minors last season when you could just have a replacement level player get 600 plate appearances in a completely winnable division.

Let’s hope Patterson is just a back up player.
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Via Baseball Think Factory, a good rant against the designated hitter:

The usual defense of the DH is that it allows old, washed-up ballplayers, or younger, injured ones, or just tubby ones who have trouble bending over to pick up a ground ball, to extend their careers and allow their many fans more chances to see them display their batting skills. I am unmoved by their plight. Let them get out of the way and make room for the young, new stars waiting for their chance to shine. It’s time for the old guys to make the acquaintance of Warren Buffet and various Wall Street investment banker types.

Soccer Dad reprints an essay by a fan who is giving up his Orioles season tickets.

It’s Bob Walk bobblehead night in Pittsburgh (worst name ever for a pitcher), and fans are planning to walk out of the game after the third inning. Pat Lackey is concerned that the club is trying to keep the protest from being televised:

The Pirates are actively attempting to crush dissent. The thing is, because the walkout is scheduled to be between innings, Fox Sports Pittsburgh and Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (the Nats’ channel) cameras will be off, meaning that the Pirates plan might actually work. Local network KDKA does have a camera situated outside the park that can capture most of the images and pass them along to ESPN and other national outlets, but it’s not particularly close to the park and won’t be able to provide very high quality pictures. I suppose all Pirate fans can hope is that this plan somehow backfires on the Pirate owners and word gets out to bigger outlets that not only are fans protesting, but the Pirates are doing everything possible to make sure no one finds out about it.

Well, it would be fairly easy to walk out after the station comes back from commercial, which would make a lot more sense. And if ESPN really wanted to cover this, it’s easy enough for them to send a camera man and producer to the game to film the walkout and interview protesters. Of course, given that the Pirates have the second lowest home attendance in the NL, most of the Pirates fans are protesting already by staying away.

Redus and Weep honors Eric Milton in verse. Milton would be proud!

There will be a protest today during the Tigers/Orioles game:

“Nasty” Nestor Aparicio, the Dundalk guy who’s been a radio personality in this town for years and owns WYST (“Sports Talk 1570”), is hoping you’ll show up at the “Free the Birds” protest rally he’s organized at Camden Yards, when the Orioles play the Tigers at 4:05.
Aparicio, 38, is the little guy who always thinks big.
So today he envisions thousands of ticked-off fans in black “Free the Birds” T-shirts marching through the streets to Oriole Park, congregating in the upper deck, then walking out en masse an hour or so later to deliver a simple message: It’s time for O’s owner Peter Angelos to go.
“He needs to realize he’s hurting the city,” Aparicio says, offering the owner this advice, free of charge: “If you want to help this city, you’ll put your ego aside, take the check [offered by a prospective buyer] and step aside.

If anyone attends, feel free to e-mail photos from your cell phone to me, pinto@baseballmusings.com. I’ll be happy to post them.