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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 > June > 05
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Is it the new, improved Homer?
Absolutely loved what I saw from Homer Bailey — on the mound and in the clubhouse.
OK, so he still had his cowboy buckle and his cowboy boots (but I didn’t see the Bowie knife), but if he can pitch the way he did Thursday and handle the post-game media the way he did, he can wear the Emperor’s clothes.
Heck, only Marty Brennaman gets on Jeff “Cowboy” Brantley for the color combinations he wears in suits, shirts and ties.
Bailey pitched good, man, very good. Had he not run up against a solid Cole Hamels (no runs, three hits in a 5-0 shutout), he might have won. Had he not had three unearned runs posted to his name on errors by shortstop Paul Janish, Ken Griffey Jr. and one himself, he might have won.
He gave up only four hits and two earned runs over 6 1/3 innings against a solid offensive team in a ballpark built for two — two homers a day, whether they need them or not.
Afterward, he faced the media and provided great insight and great quotes. After the way I’ve been hard and harsh on him since spring training, I approached with trepidation, but he twice looked me in the eye and answered the questions.
And with a smile. Good for him. Let’s hope he stays this way, stays strong on the mound, stays strong in the clubhouse and becomes another important piece to the starting rotation.
Think about it: Edinson Volquez, Aaron Harang, Johnny Cueto, Bronson Arroyo (The Good Bronson, not the Charles Bronson) and Bailey.
Things could look up considerably.
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TweetNo conspiracy with Griffey
Dusty Baker knows about Conspiracy Theories. Not only is he a history buff who knows a few things about the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, he knows about baseball conspiracies.
And one of them wasn’t The Ken Griffey Conspiracy. To listen to the Philadelphia media when Griffey didn’t start the first three games in Philly you would have thought Griffey took a bat and cracked the Liberty Bell or traded the recipe to Cincinnati five-way chili for the recipe for Philly cheesesteaks.
Baker was batting behind Hank Aaron in 1974 for the Atlanta Braves when they opened the season in Cincinnati and Aaron was one home run short of Babe Ruth’s 714.
The Braves wanted to keep Aaron out of the lineup so he could hit the historic home run in old Atlanta/Fulton County Stadium. But they made their intentions known and didn’t have Aaron come up with general soreness.
Commissioner Bowie Kuhn stepped in and said, “Hank, though shalt not sit. Thou shalt play and smote one into the great beyond.”
And that’s what Aaron did, hitting No. 714 against Cincinnati’s Jack Billingham, then hitting the record No. 715 in Atlanta later in the week against LA’s Al Downing.
Now it is Ken Griffey Jr. trying for home run No. 600, and suddenly he doesn’t play Monday in Philadelphia. General soreness, they said.
Out came the conspiracy theorists. One Cincinnati TV station said Griffey wouldn’t play in the Philadelphia series because his family couldn’t make it to Philly and he would wait until the Reds got to Florida on Friday. He could do it there in front of family.
What a joke. If I’m not mistaken, wasn’t that No. 3, batting third, bashing a double that one-hopped the left-field wall in the third inning Thursday? Guess he was playing, huh?
And wasn’t that Griffey pinch-hitting Tuesday and Wednesday? On Wednesday, he took a hefty-bag swing at a 3-and-0 pitch and Baker said, “You don’t think he wasn’t trying to hit that ball out of the park? He wasn’t swinging for a single to left, that’s for sure.”
Here’s the thing, and it’s one of the many things I admire about Ken Griffey Jr.
On Memorial Day, an off day after a trip to LA and San Diego, Griffey was in the training room. They drained 50 cc’s of fluid out of his left knee. Then he took TWO cortisone shots — one on the outside of the knee and another on the inside.
Don’t know if any of you have had cortisone shots, but I’ve had one. I’d rather chew thumb tacks and drink vinegar straight up than have another cortisone shot in my knee. When they put the word pain in the dictionary, they should include a photo of a cortisone needle.
Anyway, Griffey played the next seven games until Baker noticed him limping last Sunday and took him out. Then he gave him Monday off and didn’t start him Tuesday or Wednesday.
The mistake is that the Reds said he wasn’t playing because of general soreness. What’s that? No wonder folks were skeptical. I was skeptical. General Soreness? I thought he was commander of the 7th Confederate Division in the Civil War.
Why don’t they just come out and say: “Ken Griffey Jr has a sore left knee. We took 50 cc’s of fluid out of it on Memorial Day and he had two cortisone shots. The knee is a day-to-day thing.”
Instead it’s another conspiracy and the Philadelphia media thought he was ducking their fair city. All that was missing was the Zapruder film.
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