Now this is what I call a sports page…
Well, I managed to rush home from school fast enough to catch the last inning-and-a-half of the Red Sox opener in Cincinnati. Consequently, I got to see a bit of baseball history as it happened.
I wasn’t expecting that. I didn’t know about this ABS thing. (Oh, I remember talk about it, but I missed when it became a done deal.) But it came up in the ninth, to the benefit of the Sox.
Roman Anthony had been living up to the hype all through the game. With Bregman gone and Anthony back from being on the injured list, the scribes down in spring training had really been building him up, with such headlines as:
‘He looks like a superhero’: Roman Anthony is already the face of the Red Sox. He hasn’t even played a full season.
When I saw him come up in the ninth, I learned that he’d already had three hits in this game. He was about to do something else, something that no member of his team had ever done.
He had a full count on him, and then the ump called a strike to ruin the outfielder’s excellent day. Anthony immediately appealed the call. I was all like “What?,” but it turned out this was a thing. The verdict of the machine was clear — the pitch was a couple of inches low. He took his base.
Consequently, he and Marcelo Mayer ended up scoring to increase the Boston lead from 1-0 to 3-0. Then Aroldis Chapman took the mound to make the end of all Reds hope official. Very satisfactory. Everything went just as it should, unless you were a Reds fan (which I used to be, back when Johnny Bench was a rookie and Pete Rose still sported a crewcut, but no more).
But back to this ABS thing. I’m trying to make up my mind.
On the one hand, I generally don’t like innovation in baseball. Far as I’m concerned, the last good change in the game was when Branch Rickey brought up Jackie Robinson. That was six years before I was born. Beyond that, I like the old ways. You know me Al.
Sure, umpires experience fits of blindness, but I feel that respecting their calls is like respecting the game. I don’t like to see them dissed like this. I’m a law-and-order guy.
On the other hand, it clearly was a ball, so truth won out. Should we defer to the ump to the extent of denying Anthony his rightful walk?
I dunno. I guess I end up on the side of the machines here, but I don’t feel good about it. Although something the announcers said makes me feel a little better. They noted that Anthony has a great eye, and they speculated that any time he appeals a pitch, he’s likely to come out on top. (He’d been looking forward to the new rule.) And isn’t that fair? If the kid has an eye like Ted Williams, shouldn’t we respect that?
Setting this historical footnote aside, let’s turn to the game, and where we now stand for this season. Dan Shaughnessy allowed himself to indulge in a bit of encouragement today. After 12 grafs of sharing historical anecdotes showing what an old hand he is, he condescended to toss this bone to the fans:
Overreact all you like, Sox fans. After one game, The Red Sox are tied with the Yankees and Orioles for first place in the AL East, Crochet’s ERA is 0.00, Chapman is tied for the MLB lead in saves, Anthony is batting .750, Marcelo Mayer is hitting 1.000 and Sonny Gray — who has never lost a game with the Red Sox — gets the ball Saturday against a Reds team that hasn’t scored a single run this season.
Yeah, I’ll settle for that. Let’s keep up the good work.
A good start…
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Shaughnessy is only happy when the Red Sox are losing. He’ll be first to pounce when the inevitable 3 game losing streak happens.
If Anthony can get some elevation in his swing at the expense of some batting average, he’ll hit 30 HR. 110+ mph off the bat consistently will make him a force for years barring injury.
I should note that Anthony’s successful challenge wasn’t the FIRST use of ABS in the MLB:
Yeah, but was that fair — the Yankees getting to start the night BEFORE Opening Day? What do they think they are, special?
Meanwhile, my SECOND favorite baseball team had a good start as well, although they didn’t dominate the way the Sox did.
Thank goodness they still HAVE their 3rd baseman. Otherwise, they’d have lost…
My THIRD-favorite team (the ones who keep winning the World Series) did well, too, spanking one of those expansion clubs that I still haven’t quite accepted into the MLB…
Thinking about Ring Lardner‘s You Know Me Al (which I’ve been rereading) reminds me of the baseball innovation that he campaigned against so fiercely — the Lively Ball. He believe it would ruin the game.
Well, baseball has survived it, and had some pretty good seasons since 1920. But there are days when I feel maybe he had a point. Sometimes it seems like undeserving batters are putting it over the fence a little too easily…
Just this:
Well, last night was disappointing. The Reds won, in the 11th inning. Well, at least the folks in Cincinnati were happy. And they deserve a win now and then — especially after losing their opener, and at home. Those folks love their baseball, bless them. In the column I referred to above, Shaughnessy described it this way:
So I don’t mind letting those good people have one. Anyway, this is baseball — even the best team will lose about a third of them.
It was a bad day for my second-favorite team as well. But at least, they, too managed to hang on into extra innings.
But the Dodgers won, with Will Smith saving the day — and on his birthday. Good. No one should lose to a team named for rattlesnakes. Happy birthday, Will.
Back to the Red Sox. They brought closer Aroldis Chapman in in the ninth — and ONLY the ninth. At the time, it made sense. They needed him to make sure there would BE a 10th (and 11th). I was disappointed he didn’t STAY, though. I guess Cora’s making sure he doesn’t blow out his mighty arm right at the start of the season. But Chapman doesn’t look to me like the delicate type. I dunno. If I were paying a guy $13.3 million to pitch, I might keep him in the bullpen permanently, rather than ruin him by sending him in at the wrong time…
I learned more about this ABS thing in the Saturday games.
I kept hearing announcers say things like, “Remember, they still have one ABS challenge left…,” the way teams have a certain number of timeouts in other sports.
OK, so here’s what I don’t understand… as I take it, only the individual player can initiate the challenge, and he has to do it right away by touching his helmet or cap.
But it seems like if a team only has two chances, that ought to be left to the manager. That’s a resource he should be able to reserve for needed moments.
Sure, I know (or at least assume) why they did this — it’s another “Let’s speed up baseball” thing. They didn’t want to add two more delays with a bunch of consultation and back-and-forth. Because the lords of baseball have decided they aren’t satisfied with the money of actual baseball fans — they want to pull in all the basketball fans as well. Hence the obscene intrusion of clocks.
The “speed up baseball” people probably argued against ABS — but making it something that wouldn’t take more than a few seconds — unlike those reviews by the “people in New York” — probably silenced them….
But who am I to speculate about the motives of those on Olympus?
And, as long as a disciplined kid like Roman Anthony is making the call, it’s OK. He’s not going to waste ABS.
But some guys, the types who always feel they’re getting a raw deal, will have to be threatened by management that they’ll get sent down if they waste the appeals…
Yikes, a minute ago, new Sox 2nd baseman Marcelo Mayer tapped his helmet after a full-count pitch that obviously caught the lower inside corner of the zone. And the ABS confirmed that, so the Sox lost one of their two appeals for nothing.
Cora should definitely revoke his wing-it privileges.
They need to leave the helmet-tapping to Anthony for the moment…
But Anthony won’t always be on the receiving end. Just now, he was batting and the catcher protested a pitch called as a ball. So it was 2 and 1. He won the appeal, taking it to 1 and 2.
In the end, Anthony hit a high fly to center for an easy out…
Note that on this day of rest, I’m simultaneously reading this week’s linguistics assignment (my notes on it are due at 8 p.m.), glancing at the ball game off and on, and commenting upon it here.
I had planned to get a nap and a shower to wake me up before heading to 5:30 Mass. Not gonna happen…