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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 > 2009 > June > 07
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Brandon Phillips tells it as it is
Brandon Phillips - you have to love the guy. Brutally honest. Brutally self-deprecating. He calls a jack a jack and a diamond a diamond and if you don’t like it, deal the cards elsewhere.
After the Reds lost horrendously Sunday, a 6-3 14-inning affair to the Chicago Cubs during which they stranded 16 baserunners, Phillips was on a roll. Mike Lincoln, manager Dusty Baker’s eighth and last available pitcher, gave up a home run to Alfonso Soriano on his first pitch in the 14th and then two more runs.
What did Phillips say?
“Mike Lincoln never should have had to be in that game,” he said. “We should have won it long before he took the mound. He should have been home in bed after a win for us long before he was on the mound.
“That was a terrible game. The pitchers did their job but the position players sucked. We deserved to lose. We had so many chances with one out and guys in scoring position. We two outs I can understand it not happening, but not with only one out.
“Down the road this loss might hurt us, the way our division is,” Phillips continued. “We might need this win.”
Phillips tossed a piece of gear into his travel bag and said, “We need to go beat the Washington Nationals into the ground.” The Reds are off Monday, then play three in Washington and three over the weekend in Kansas City.
What irked Phillips even more was when he saw that both Milwaukee and St. Louis lost Sunday and the Reds muffed a chance go gain ground on the leaders. “I said Friday after we lost to the Cubs that I thought we were the better team. Then we played like today and saying that made me look bad.”
JAY BRUCE WAS not in Sunday’s lineup against the Cubs and was told to sit near manager Dusty Baker for at least two innings. It wasn’t punishment, not like a teacher ordering a dunce to sit in the first chair in front of her desk.
It was tutorial time, even though Baker didn’t know Bruce was 2 for 33. All he said was, “All I know is the law of averages are with him and somebody is going to pay.”
“Dusty told me I was going to sit next to him today and learn some stuff,” said Bruce. “I’ll take it in for a couple of innings, then be ready for whatever task I’m given.”
Baker said Sunday’s day off and a day off for the team today should serve Bruce well to sit back, observe and organize his thoughts.
“It’s tough on you mentally when you aren’t getting hits and you’re used to getting hits,” said Baker. “He’s been better the last few days on pitch selection and not chasing bad pitches. He’s taking some walks. I talked to him about narrowing that strike-zone box, make the pitcher come into that box and the walks go up, the RBIs go up and the batting average goes up.”
Whatever Dusty and Bruce discussed worked - for one day, for one at-bat. Bruce pinch-hit in the seventh and drove a double to left-center, didn’t try to pull it.
UMPIRE SUPERVISOR Bruce Froemming was seated in the press box for the second straight game and told a great story about his first year of umpiring, when he was 19 years old and fresh out of umpiring school in Daytona Beach, Fla.
It was his first week in the old Northern League and he was working a series between Duluth and Superior. In his first game he reversed a call on the other umpire that went against Duluth and the pressbox erupted.
“Then they got after me in the newspaper,” said Froemming. “I was there a week and every day in the paper it was, ‘Froemming did this and Froemming did that,’ in big headlines. I got tired of it.”
So before the next game, Froemming ordered the pressbox cleared. Everybody out. The writers refused to leave. Froemming threatened to forfeit the game to Superior. The Duluth management convinced the writers to leave so it wouldn’t have to refund ticket money.
“The main guy I threw out was Arnold Gotha of the Duluth paper and he later worked in Detroit,” said Froemming. “Hey, I was young and they told me I was in charge of the field and to me the press box was part of the field, so I cleared it.”
I asked Froemming who was the best pitcher he ever saw and I got a litany of Hall of Fame and All-Star pitchers.
“Bob Gibson was the best athlete,” said Froemming. “He could throw, hit, run, he was smart and he threw strikes. And if you hit a home run off him and watched it too long you knew what was coming the next at-bat. He’d bury one in your ribs.”
Froemming, of course, listed Nolan Ryan and said, “I worked the plate for his fifth no-hitter, a Saturday afternoon in Houston in 1981 against the Dodgers.”
He also listed Tom Seaver, Steve Carlton, Greg Maddux, Bob Veale (“Nasty when he could throw strikes, as was John Candelaria.”), Don Sutton (“Great stuff.”), Don Gullett and Randy Johnson.
And one other? “I worked the plate in Class D in Michigan City, Ind. for a guy named Juan Marichal,” he said. “And Jose Tartabull was on that team. A great team.”
Ah, great stuff for us old-timers.
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