AJC > Sports > Braves > Blog > Archives > 2007 > October > 24
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Cramped, but baseball bliss. Let’s do this.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Just when you’re about to complain about the obnoxiously overcrowded pressbox at this World Series in Fenway Park, you feel like a whiny idiot when your hear that Dave Justice lost his San Diego home in the wildfires.
So I’ll not complain about the pressbox. But I can’t type without bumping elbows with Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on my left and a Japanese reporter on my right, who I might add is using a very small laptop with “Bluetooth” capabilities, which I’m pretty sure is really high-tech. (But I bet he’s never heard George Jones’ “High-Tech Redneck,” so I do have that on my Asian seatmate … or at least it feels like he’s my seatmate — my God, this makes a coach seat on Delta feel spacious. But I’m not gonna complain.)
Besides, it’s a minor inconvenience. Nothing could spoil this day, this atmosphere.
I’m watching the Red Sox take batting practice, with the Prudential building and Boston skyline beyond right field, while folks who paid scalpers $1,500 for cheap seats are waiting for the gates to be opened so they can enter the stadium.
(Why do the Red Sox not open the gates in time for Red Sox Nation to watch their heroes take batting practice? Seems odd to me).
And I have a full belly after chowing on one of the best hamburgers I’ve had the pleasure of consuming. Thanks to the blogger here yesterday who recommended Uburger near Kenmore Station — the “Boom Burger” with fried jalapenos and cheddar was out of this world, and the fries stupendous.
Who says you’ve got to spend a fortune to eat well in Boston? Long as you don’t mind ordering at a counter and eating off a tray, you can get a mighty fine meal for under $10.
You cannot, however, get a sweatshirt for under $50. Not this week. Not with Red Sox on it.
I went to a souvenir shop on Yawkey Way across from Fenway Park, to get a sweatshirt for my girlfriend. And I was astounded to see the $75 price tag on seemingly ordinary Red Sox hooded sweatshirts. And $125 for “vintage” hoodies (hey, they’re cool, but not $125 cool).
I settled on the one that didn’t have the familiar swoosh logo and cost $25 less — a mere $50 for a sweatshirt!
And speaking of exorbitant costs, the scalpers out in Denver are getting $400 for those Rockpile seats in the funky section high above center field. The Rockies sell those seats for $4 during the regular season - and $65 during the World Series. Talk about gouging the customer.
Then again, would you rather pay $65 for a Rockpile seat (if you were fortunate enough to pay face value, rather than buy from a scalper), or $50 to pahk ya cah a quarter-mile or more from Fenway?
So will the Series be back in Boston next week? In other words, do you folks believe it’ll go more than five games?
I think we could know a lot more a few hours from now, because if the Rockies come out smokin’ hot against Josh Beckett, well, then I’ll take the Rockies in five games.
But I’m not expecting that, for two reasons: The Rockies have won 21 of 22 games, but they’ve not played in more than a week. And Beckett has been as close to unhittable this postseason as you’re going to get.
So if the Rockies come out flat against Beckett and lose tonight, does it really mean a lot? Probably not. We’ll know a lot more, in that case, after they face Curt Schilling in Game 2 on Thursday.
Because, as Schilling himself said in the interview room an hour ago, he ain’t what he used to be.
“I’m a different pitcher now,” said Schilling, in a moment of humility that we’re not accustomed to. “Whereas I used to be able to exploit with one pitch, now I’ve got to use different pitches to different spots.”
As for Beckett, Schilling said: “We’ve got the best pitcher in the planet going for us tonight.”
Tough to argue against that assessment, considering Beckett was the only 20-game winner in the majors this season, and has been even more dominant in the postseason. In three starts in these playoffs, Beckett is 3-0 with a 1.17 ERA, .160 opponents’ average, and a stunning 26 strikeouts with only one walk in 23 innings.
My old Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel colleague Gordon Edes, who now covers the Red Sox for the Boston Globe, wrote a story today that compared Beckett’s postseason to the great Bob Gibson’s three wins against the Red Sox in the 1967 World Series, when Gibson went 3-0 with a 1.00 ERA, with 26 strikeouts and five walks in 27 innings.
Of course, Gibson did that in one series/ Then again, he also did it off a raised mound. Different era, deeper lineups, so perhaps Beckett’s postseason is on a similar level as Gibson’s.
But I’ll reserve judgment until after this World Series.
There can be no disputing Beckett’s “big game” reputation, however, which is entirely deserved. He’s now 5-2 with a 1.78 ERA in nine career postseason games, including eight starts and one memorable four-inning, one-hit relief appearance against for Florida against the Cubs in Game 7 of the 2003 NLCS.
He got three wins in that NLCS, and just over a week later in the World Series, Beckett threw a five-hit shutout in the clinching Game 6 win against the Yankees.
I remember how John Smoltz sounded a bit perturbed when so many people raved about Beckett’s performance that offseason, like it had never been done in recent times or something, when in fact Smoltz had done similar work in several postseasons.
And Smoltz was right. It’s a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately society that always wants to make the most recent performance by so-and-so the best performance in history, where sports writers and ESPN guys always want to say this guy’s the best or that team was the best, discounting the person or team they’d said or written that about just a few years earlier.
But if Beckett has a great World Series, he will have certainly earned a spot in that pantheon of great postgame pitchers of the modern era, of the three-tiered playoff era, if he hasn’t already.
For Rockies fans, there’s plenty of reason to believe your boys can handle him. Because they have before. He was 4-0 with a 2.81 ERA in five starts against them for the Marlins from 2002 to 2005.
But with Boston, he faced them June 14 at Fenway and gave up six runs and 10 hits in five innings of a 7-1 loss to the Rockies. Matt Holliday is 6-for-14 against him, Todd Helton 4-for-12, and Garrett Atkins 6-for-10.
Then again, this is October, and Beckett’s been one tough cuss this time of year.
So I’m talking with one of the veteran ESPN guys in the Fenway Park pressbox a few minutes ago, and out of the blue he says he thinks the Braves could be playing in the World Series a year from now if a couple of things go their way.
(It wasn’t Jon Sciambi I was talking to, but I did see “Boog” just a while ago, as he was about to enter a radio booth. He’s doing pre- and post-game shows on ESPN’s radio broadcast. And he got a short haircut, looks ready for business.)
Anyway, this other ESPN guy, more a behind-the-scenes guy who does research and a lot of the real legwork for the broadcasters, mentions how much he likes the Braves’ rotation if they add Glavine and some other decent starter this winter.
He said he’s a bit concerned about Soriano in the closer role, but then I reminded him that Mike Gonzalez should be back by July, and that Soriano really looked great in the first third and last third of the season.
Then he agreed with me that getting Gonzalez back was huge, that his injury was a big blow last season. And I say, yes, and so was losing Hampton in the spring. And he says, “Oh yeah, they get Hampton back this season, too, don’t they?”
Well, I said, they hope they do. They’re paying him $15 mill, so they better get something out of him this season. Because I don’t know how much, if any, that insurance would pay if he were to miss a third consecutive season.
Then again, if Hampton can’t pitch again this season, Braves might be able to claim he had a career-ending injury last spring and perhaps get a settlement that covers part of his salary this season, too. I don’t know, honestly. I’ll have to ask about all that later, after we find out about Hampton this winter and/or in spring training, whether he’s going to be ready and all for the final season of his contract.
I asked Frank Wren about it today via an e-mail, whether he knew if Hampton had a winter-ball assignment yet, or if he knew anything more about his health than we knew at end of season, which really wasn’t much.
Here’s his e-mail reply, which I just received and am adding during the top half of the first inning: “Hampton is progressing and if all goes well, will try to pitch winter ball the second half starting in late November. We are working towards that.”
So there you have it. Straight from the GM to you, with me simply a relay man.
Wren digs “The Office”: I did, however, get a list of Frank’s five favorite shows, which I’d asked him about last week for the Gimme 5 thing we run on Page 2. Gotta like a man who’ll take a few minutes away from a very busy schedule to humor me with my request for his five favorite TV shows.
And gotta like him even more when you see the list.
He called it “Five shows I Tivo” and here they are: 24, The Office, House, SportsCenter, and The Today Show.
OK, so I’m not up to watch The Today Show, but I’ll assume it’s solid entertainment. The others on his list, I watch religiously (yes, even SportsCenter, I must admit, though I turn the channel quickly or mute sometimes when Stuart Scott is talking or Chris Berman does his painful “The Schwam” segment.
I don’t want to give away Frank’s lines about each shows, but since some of you won’t see the Gimme 5 list in the paper, I’ll share these two: of 24, he said, “We all need a cellphone like Jack Bauer.” And of The Office, he said, “Hope I’m a better leader than Michael.”
Couple quick items: Carl Yastrzemski is throwing out the first pitch tonight. You kiddies might not remember, but Yaz won the Triple Crown in 1967…. Composer/conductor John Williams leads the Boston Pops in The Star Spangled Banner” before tonight’s game, and Ashanti will do “God Bless America” during the seventh-inning stretch. And how cool is this — James Taylor will do “Carolina In My Mind” before Game 2. Kidding. He’ll do the national anthem.
Ok, this is a mellow sort of soft-rock song, but I always liked it, and it’s the only song I know where the first two cities mentioned are Boston and Denver.
”PLEASE COME TO BOSTON” by Dave Loggins
Please come to Boston for the springtime
I’m stayin’ here with some friends and they’ve got lots of room
You can sell your paintings on the sidewalk
By a cafe where I hope to be workin’ soon
Please come to Boston
She said, “No, would you come home to me?”
And she said, “Hey ramblin’ boy now won’t cha settle down?
Boston ain’t your kinda town
There ain’t no gold and there ain’t nobody like me
I’m the number one fan of the man from Tennessee.”
Please come to Denver with the snowfall
We’ll move up into the mountains so far that we can’t be found
And throw “I love you” echoes down the canyon
And then lie awake at night till they come back around
Please come to Denver
She said, “No, Boy, would you come home to me?”
And she said, “Hey ramblin’ boy why don’t cha settle down
Denver ain’t your kinda town
There ain’t no gold and there ain’t nobody like me
‘Cause I’m the number one fan of the man from Tennessee.”
Now this drifter’s world goes ‘round and ‘round
And I doubt that it’s ever gonna stop
But of all the dreams I’ve lost or found
And all that I ain’t got
I still need to lean to
Somebody I can sing to
Please come to LA to live forever
California life alone is just too hard to build
I live in a house that looks out over the ocean
And there’s some stars that fell from the sky
Livin’ up on the hill
Please come to LA
She just said “no, Boy, won’t you come home to me?”
And she said, “Hey ramblin’ boy why don’t cha settle down
LA can’t be your kinda town
There ain’t no gold and there ain’t nobody like me
No, no, I’m the number one fan of the man from Tennessee.”
“I’m the number one fan of the man from Tennessee.”
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