Galea told The Associated Press on Monday that he treated the Yankees star for his hip, which was “inflamed.” But Galea says he has never given HGH to any athlete and Rodriguez was given anti-inflammatories.
I wish this passed the sniff test with me. But it doesn’t. Here’s why:
(click “view full post” to read more)
Not sure why this is coming out today (really, last night) when the deed was done back on January 12th, but it’s still a shame in the way it was handled, it seems:
Major League Baseball, angry over the abundance of blown umpiring calls in the 2009 postseason, has fired three of its seven ump supervisors.
Marty Springstead, Rich Garcia and Jim McKean, each involved in umpiring for 40 or more years, were fired on Jan. 12. They received the news by telephone.
“I was totally shocked,” said Springstead, who began his umpiring career in 1960. “Fifty years, and I get a four-minute phone call to say good-bye? They didn’t give us a lot of reasons.“
Randy Marsh and Charlie Reliford, two umpires who retired after last season, have been hired as replacements. Ed Montague, who retired after 34 years, also is in negotiations about a supervisor’s job.
Imagine working at your company for fifty years, doing a good enough job to last that long, then tossed unceremoniously via a phone call? We blast the umps at will, sometimes rightfully so, but most of us recognize that these guys are human and doing the best job they can at the time. They don’t (yet) have the benefit of instant replay on every close call that we, the viewers, do.
I’m not saying that the underperforming don’t deserve to be replaced, but to do so in that manner is just bad form.
Some really good stuff coming out of a roundtable hosted by USA Today’s Bob Nightingale. It’s the kind of discussion we’d love to be part of; hearing the different opinions and rationales coming from the different constituencies within baseball. Nightingale summarized the three major topics that were discussed with the panel (which included: Dusty Baker, Scott Boras, Torii Hunter, LaTroy Hawkins, Steve Palermo, and two scouts): Replay, the Strike Zone and Speed of Play. I tried to capture the most intriguing comments below, but feel free to click thru to read the whole synopsis:
Umpiring supervisor Steve Palermo, considered baseball’s finest umpire until he was forced into retirement after being shot in the spinal cord outside a Dallas restaurant in 1991, doesn’t sugarcoat his sentiments. He sympathized with umpire Tim McClelland after his gaffe in Game 4 of the American League Championship Series when it appeared the Angels had tagged two Yankees runners off third base and McClelland called only one of them out. Palermo was angry that no one on McClelland’s umpiring crew came to his assistance and overturned the call.
It was no different with Phil Cuzzi’s call in the AL Division Series, when Palermo says Minnesota Twins catcher Joe Mauer’s apparent double was errantly ruled foul.
Palermo, to this day, doesn’t understand why no one else on McClelland’s crew seemed to have seen the play.
“We could have reversed it,” Palermo says. “You know what? We got six guys on the field. One of those five other guys has got to see it.”
This is precisely what I want to read/hear, a former umpire laying it down. He’s right, too, as one of the other five guys has to not only see it, but also have the confidence to call a conference with his peers to share what he saw, even if it contradicts the crew chief.
(click “view full most” for more)
This doesn’t seem to be part of the RBI initiative, but MLB’s building some fields in Jamaica:
Jamaica is taking after its baseball-crazy Caribbean neighbors with plans for a new field supported by Major League Baseball.
[...]
Jamaica plays cricket but has little baseball tradition compared to neighbors like Cuba and the Dominican Republic. It does not have a national baseball team, and the country’s high schools play softball.
Dem jus begin fi dead when wi did wi ting.
[glossary here]
