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Hall of Fame baseball writer Hal McCoy has retired from the Dayton Daily News after covering the Cincinnati Reds for 37 years. Hal's blog, though, will continue to be a must-read for Reds fans. He'll share his thoughts on the team this season and will file updates from Great American Ball Park. You also can catch Hal in print every Sunday in his popular Ask Hal columnHome > Blogs > The Real McCoy | Cincinnati Reds baseball news > Archives > 2008 > May > 25
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Misery loves lots of company
Some days it just doesn’t pay to flip back the covers and plop the ol’ tootsies on to the cold morning floor.
That’s the way I feel right now after a long, long Sunday and I’m certain that’s the way guys like Matt Belisle, David Weathers, Francisco Cordero, Bill Bray, Corey Patterson, Edwin Encarnacion and Joey Votto feel right now as they board a charter flight home.
They played 18 innings Sunday. They played for nearly six hours. There were 580 pitches thrown. And the Cincinnati Reds lost to the forlorn and woebegotten San Diego Padres, 12-9.
So the Reds wobble home after a normal West Coast trip - 2 wins, 5 losses.
The day began normally for me - arrived at the ball park at 10 a.m. (1 p.m. Eastern). Did a blog, then visited Dusty Baker and the players in the clubhouse. Came back to the press box for a nice special order omlette cooked to my specifications in the media dining room ($9, plus tip).
Wrote my Reds notebook as the game began at 1:05 (4:05 Eastern). Six cookies, two hot dogs, four combo Diet Coke-lemonades, a piece of pizza and two coffees later, it was after 7 p.m. (10 o’clock Eastern) and my deadline was creeping up.
And I hadn’t written a line. You aren’t supposed to write a game story ahead of time for a day game, even on the West Coast. But there it was. And the story line kept changing.
It was another bad day for Belisle - 4 1/3 innings, five runs, eight hits and early expulsion from the mound. It was a bad day for Weathers, Cordero and Bray. This team had blown only two saves all year and those guys each blew a save Sunday.
It was a bad day (make that miserable, awful, repulsive) for Patterson. He was 0 for 8 and would have been 0 for 9 had he not successfully sacrifice bunted once. It was nearly as bad for Encarnacion, who was 1 for 8 only because he beat an infield hit his last time up.
It was bad for Votto because his throwing error on what should have been the last out of the 18th extended the inning, enabling Adrian Gonzalez to hit a game-ending three-run walkoff home run off Edinson Volquez, pitching in relief when he should have been enjoying a day free of work.
Aaron Harang had to work four innings, too.
All this proved was that two bad teams - the last-place Padres and the last-place Reds can double the pain of one game by stretching it over the length of two games before somebody painfully prevails.
The Reds are off today, then play three at home with their Sisters-in-Pain, the equally inept Pittsburgh Pirates. But adjustments will have to be made because Baker was forced to use starters Harang and Volquez in relief.
Is there a Homer Bailey sighting ahead this week? Or maybe Daryl Thompson, who is on the 40-man roster and was recently promoted to Class AAA Louisville.
So now it is nearly 9 p.m. on the West Coast (midnight Eastern) and I’m packing up in the press box. My plans for a nice Mexican meal in Old Town are shot. My plane tomorrow morning is 6 a.m.
Some days it just doesn’t pay to slide back the sheets and face a miserable day. At least I’m coming home.
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TweetRandom thoughts in Paradise Lost
Another day in Paradise Lost. It is chilly and the skies are the color of Grandam Moses’s hair.
San Diego? More like Milwaukee. I once asked my friend, Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, if they had summer in Milwaukee.
“Yes,” he said. “August 25th, from noon to four.”
AN ALL-STAR moment this year: Edinson Volquez (7-1, 1.34) facing Josh Hamilton (.337, 12 homers, 14 doubles, 53 RBIs).
THE HEAVENLY Beds in Westin/Starwood hotels are, indeed, heavenly, but the new ones in the Marriotts are awfully tough to get out of in the morning.
ONE MORE TIME: No more messages/comments/e-mails about trading Ken Griffey Jr. I’m going to say it here for the 598th time - Griffey has a no-trade clause. Griffey has told GM Walt Jocketty he doesn’t want to be traded. Ken Griffey Jr. will NOT be traded.
DID YOU KNOW that the 1999 Reds, a team I dubbed The Big Road Machine because of its success in road games, established a Major League record with 10 straight wins over first-place teams (3-0 at Arizona, 4-0 at Houston, 3-0 against Arizona again). This year’s team has five in a row (3-0 Florida, 2-0 Cleveland). Yes, the won three from Cleveland, but the Tribe was in second place for the third game.
WHAT’S UP IN SAN DIEGO? The Hilton hotel, just outside Petco Park, blew up last week. The Padres lost three players to the DL last week - top pitchers Jake Peavy and Chris Young, plus catcher Josh Bard.
Young and Bard were both eliminated in the same inning by St. Louis’ Albert Pujols. First Pujols lined a pitch off Young’s face and nose, shattering bones. Then he put Bard on the DL with a slide home.
Then the Padres struck out 30 times in two games against the Reds and in between those two games Reds interim manager Chris Speier was nearly maimed by a falling piece of steel pipe as he ran the stadium steps.
CAN YOU says cursed?
THREE THINGS Ken Griffey Jr. wants to see when he gets out of baseball: Indianapolis 500, Kentucky Derby, Sport Super Bikes in Europe.
“I used to hear the Indianapolis 500 when my daddy played Triple-A there,” said Griffey.
And he had a near-Indy experience not long ago at a test track in Savannah, Ga. when he rode with former Indy driver Bobby Rahal, “At 206 miles an hour in a Porsche Carrera.” Griffey was reminded of it when he saw Rahal’s 19-year-old son, Graham, crash in this year’s 500 as Griffey watched on a clubhouse TV.
“At one point, as we approached a turn, I was looking at him and her was looking at me and nobody was looking at the road,” Griffey said of his spin with Rahal.
THE SUBECT was players able to play a lot of different positions, like Jerry Hairston Jr. and Ryan Freel, “Two guys who are rare in that they can play both infield and outfield,” said manager Dusty Baker. “To me that’s the toughest thing to do in baseball. The best I ever saw was Derrel Thomas. He had eight gloves stacked in his locker like pancakes.”
AFTER BEING the invisible man for about a month, no playing time, few pinch-hitting assignments, Javier Valentin had a pinch-hit single Friday and a pinch-hit walk Saturday.
After Saturday’s game he said with a smile, “Back-to-back games. I’m going to need a day off. I’ll be sore Sunday.”
No day off, though. Because he is one of the few baseball players in captivity who wears out Greg Maddux, Valentin was in Sunday’s lineup at first base. For his career, Valentin is 8 for 23 (.348) with four homers against Maddux.
Why are the new $10 bills rust-colored?
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TweetDavid Wells returns
When Bronson Arroyo walked into the Reds clubhouse after Saturday night’s 7-2 victory over the San Diego Padres, an old friend was sitting at a table waiting for him - a very bald friend, a very heavy friend, a very - how shall we say it? - “different” kind of friend.
It was David Wells.
Wells, a San Diego native, pitched in Boston with Arroyo. He also pitched briefly with the Reds in 1995, helping them make it to the playoffs - 13 years ago - their last visit.
Wells also wrote in his book that he pitched his perfect game with a hangover. He once tried to wear a hat worn by his idol, Babe Ruth, in a game he pitched for the New York Yankees, but the umpires made him take it off.
Wells’ mother was part of the Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang. Hey, nothing wrong with that. It’s just part of the Wells legend.
He is out of baseball now. What is he doing?
“Being bored. Bored, bored, bored,” he said. “I’m here to yell at the umpires. I’m doing some golfing. Doing some surfing. Playing with the kids. I’m playing some with the Poker All-Stars. But I’m not doing anything that’ll pay me money. Guess I have to find a job.”
After Arroyo left the table, he said about Wells, “That guy will never change, right up until the day he dies.”
Arroyo held the Padres to two runs and seven hits over 6 1/3 innings for his part of the 7-2 victory. He struck out nine, which is usually a big deal. But the Padres struck out 17 times Friday and 13 times Saturday - 30 strikeouts in two games.
Joey Votto drove in four runs, three with his 10th home run. Paul Janish drove in two in the ninth with a bases-loaded single when matters were still precarious because the Reds stranded 14 baserunners.
So interim manager Chris Speier, serving as skipper during Dusty Baker’s two-game suspension, finishes 2-0. Baker, who swears he issued no help or a hint of a suggestion to Speier, returns to the manager’s chair today.
After holding his post-game press conference, somebody told him he was dismissed as manager and Speier said, “Thank you. My retirement decision has already been made for me right now and I think Dusty is definitely coming back. Hey, the guys played hard and it was fun. Two W’s is two W’s.”
Meanwhile, everybody was filtering out of the clubhouse and Wells was still sitting at the table, pondering, he said, a trip to Fiji.
Somebody - not me, honest - suggested that he tell all the Reds pitchers the correct way to obtain a hangover before pitching a perfect game.
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