Madison graduation 2012
Warren County CC graduation
New Miami graduation 2012
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 > August > 28
Friday, August 28, 2009
Did the real Homer Bailey finally stand up?
It was the first-place Los Angeles Dodgers and it was Fireworks Night, but only 19,258 popped into Great American Ball Park Friday.
Too bad those other 21,000 seats weren’t occupied because 40,000 could have laid witness to perhaps the birth of a big-league pitcher.
Homer Bailey looks as if he finally gets it. He shut out the Dodgers on seven singles over eight innings and had to get out of more trouble than Leave it to Beaver.
Bailey didn’t leave it to anybody. When trouble surfaced, he bowed his back and mowed ‘em down. This is the pitcher the Reds thought they had when they drafted him No. 1 in 2004 - when he was 18. He is 23 now and maturity is busting out all over.
When trouble surfaced, Bailey was unhittable.
—He struck out Manny Ramirez in the first with two outs and a runner on second.
—The first two Dodgers reached base in the sixth and Bailey retired Andre Ethier, Ramirez and Casey Blake without permitting those runners to advance.
—Bailey had two on with one out in the eighth and Ramirez at the plate, 108 pitches already expended. Baker came to the mound, but Bailey talked his way into staying and he retired Ramirez on a line drive and coaxed a pop up from Blake on his 115th and final pitch.
“I told Dusty I started it and I want to finish it,” said Bailey.
Baker said he didn’t care what Bailey said, he was out there to look in his eyes, “And I wasn’t sure what I was going to do until I looked into his eyes. I wanted to see the look on his face and the look in his eyes and I saw what I wanted to see.
“If I didn’t see what I liked, I would have gone to the bullpen,” said Baker. “He looked me in the eye and said, ‘Hey, man, I’ve been throwing the ball good against Manny all night and I’d like to get him.’ Hey, he was still throwing 97 miles an hour.”
Bailey was gratified and said, “I can’t say enough about him letting me stay in. It’s a growing process young pitchers have to go through.”
Corky Miller caught Bailey for the first time ever and guided him through troubled waters.
“He’s pretty basic, four pitches,” said Miller. “But we didn’t really use the curveball much. He throws hard and his ball is not real straight. He keeps them off-balance thinking about off-speed and putting the ball inside.
“He never tried to overthrow and took the time to calm himself down when he need to do that,” Miller added. “He them made the quality pitches when he had to.”
ADDENDA: Anybody else ready to trade Coco Cordero for two used rosin bags and a box of sticks to clean the mud off cleats? Clearly, Cordero and his abundance of meaningless saves show that a closer on a losing team is an expensive gadget that isn’t needed.
Permalink | Comments (18) | Post your comment |
TweetHarang’s ride on the wild side
If any of you have driven I-70 between Pittsburgh and Columbus, you know how bleak it is. The scenery is truck stops, rest areas, a tree or two and exit ramps to nowhere.
It’s the first part of the route pitcher Aaron Harang and equipment manager Rick Stowe took last Saturday - Stowe at the wheel sweating cannon balls and Harang in the passenger seat holding his side.
“Every time Rick hit a bump, he’d ask, ‘You OK, you OK?’ ” said Harang, who was in the throes of appendicitis and the two were trying to make it from Pittsburgh to Cincinnati before his appendix burst or Stowe’s bladder burst.
Why not Pittsburgh? “The doctor there wanted to immediately slice and dice. They told me in Cincinnati it could be done by arthroscopy,” said Harang of the harrowing day.
It all started after Friday night’s game in Pittsburgh. At 11 p.m. Harang ordered a sandwich from room service, then went to bed. At 6:30 Saturday morning he woke up achy and bloated, with a sharp pain in his side.
“I took two Tums and tried to go back to sleep and it took me two hours,” said Harang. “I finally got up and checked the movie times, thinking I’d go watch a movie. But the sharp pains were still in my side by late morning.”
He called his wife, Jennifer, and she suggested he go see the team trainers to have it checked.
“I grabbed a couple of bagels at Bruegger’s and (trainer) Steve Baumann suggested a trip to the hospital,” Harang added. “That was about 5 o’clock Saturday. They diagnosed appendicitis and wanted to operate right away. I knew it was about a four-hour drive to Cincinnati and I wanted to go home.
“Rick Stowe said he would drive,” Harang said. “So off we went.”
Said Stowe, “I kept checking exits for Hospital signs. And I had to go to the bathroom but I wasn’t about to stop. Once we got to Columbus I knew it was only an hour to Cincinnati and if it got too bad we could go back to Columbus (for surgery or a bathroom break). They told me not to hit any bumps.”
No bumps? On Ohio interstates? You’d have to drive in the grass to miss bumps.
“We listened to the game on the way back,” Harang said. “We got to Good Samaritan Hospital at 11:05.”
Said Stowe, “Four hours from Pittsburgh, hospital to gurney.”
Harang said they IVed him up and 45 minutes later he was in the operating room.
“They asked me the difference between the Cincinnati Zoo and the San Diego Zoo and that’s the last thing I remember until I woke up,” he said.
Harang is walking gingerly around the clubhouse and was told he can’t do any twisting or bending for two weeks. Since twisting and bending is 85 percent (I made that figure up) of pitching, Harang won’t be doing any pitching the rest of this season.
“What are the chances?” Harang said. “I don’t get hurt on the field, I got something that is not even baseball-related. And you know the worst part? I asked the doctors what the appendix is for and they said, ‘Nothing.’”
Nothing but potential aggravation.
Permalink | Comments (8) | Post your comment |
Tweet
