You name it, Hampton’s had it
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
First it was the calf. Then it was the forearm. Then the back. Then the elbow, the oblique, the hamstring, the groin, vertigo, gout, brain freeze, demonic possession, high cholesterol, low biorhythms, closed chakras and going blind from sitting too close to the television.
Mike Hampton isn’t an injured pitcher anymore. He’s a wrenched ankle away from being the poor schlep on the Operation game. He’s way south of Chris Chandler and just north of Monty Python’s Black Knight.
Off go the arms.
“It’s just a flesh wound.”
Off go the legs.
“I’m invincible! The Black Knight triumphs!”
King Arthur passes.
“Oh, all right! We’ll call it a draw.”
For the 957th straight day, Hampton did not start an official major-league game Thursday night. He suffered an injury. A new injury.
A new injury? Who knew there were any left?
This time, it was a strained left pectoral muscle. He has been listed as moment to moment.
“Cold night,” Braves manager Bobby Cox said before the game. “Not good for hamstrings and groins.”
Cold night. Hot day. Leap year. Summer solstice. Like it matters.
When a pitcher goes nearly 32 months without a real start — with seven times on the disabled list and two major surgeries since 2005 — it’s safe to assume this is not all about weather conditions.
Mike Hampton suddenly has the durability of a Peep in a microwave.
If you’re Hampton, what’s keeping you from throwing in the towel? I mean, except maybe the fear of a torn rotator cuff.
“No, not really,” when asked he believed his fate seems doomed. “For the first 30 minutes I was pretty down. But I’m still optimistic.”
That’s one. He’s going back on the disabled list, and he hasn’t even thrown an official pitch yet.
“You think you’re ready to go, start the year and turn the page and …”
And then — same, same.
He said he felt soreness in the left pec — an unusual injury for a pitcher on Monday. He got treatment. He felt fine Thursday — for 23 pitches in the bullpen. “I turned it up, and it started biting me,” he said.
Trainers told him the injury is “minor.” Yeah.
Hampton’s $121 million contract — $43 million paid by the Braves in the final three years — mercifully ends after this year. When the deal expires, all parties will have paid off: the Rockies, the Marlins, the Braves and Aetna.
He last pitched Aug. 19, 2005 against San Diego. He allowed seven runs and 11 hits in 31/3 innings. In some painful foreshadowing, Hampton even was hit by a pitch by the Padres’ Chan Ho Park. He went on the disabled list with a herniated disk soon after. Other injuries and two elbow surgeries followed.
In the past several months, the Braves have watched Hampton rehab. But it seemed more like they were watching somebody stack wine glasses, waiting the inevitable crash.
“We saw him in Arizona before he went to Mexico [for winter ball], and he looked great,” Cox said.
Mexico. First game. First inning.
“He did the splits on a wet mound,” Cox said. “The hamstring went.”
Hampton made it to spring training. He suffered a groin strain, but the arm held up: a .500 medical batting average.
“I feel good about where I’m at,” he said at the end of spring.
Then came Thursday night. Lazarus, he wasn’t. It was 51 degrees but Hampton didn’t blame the weather. He didn’t really blame anything. But the strain was undeniable.
At 7:09, one minute before the scheduled first pitch, the Braves announced Hampton was scratched and would be replaced by Jeff Bennett. TV kept showing replays of his warm-up tosses, like the Zapruder film.
Hampton, who has been through quite a bit, said: “It’s the toughest thing I’ve ever had to do, step off the mound [in the bullpen] and hand somebody the ball.”
The Braves media game notes indicated Hampton is trying to become the first plus-35-year-old pitcher to win 10 games after missing at least two years since Lynwood “Schoolboy” Rowe in 1946.
Rowe died in 1961. He might have a better shot than Hampton to repeat the feat. It would be an achievement at this point if he could just make it to the mound.
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The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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Tradition going, going .. almost gone
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This is so ridiculous. The first couple of Major League Baseball games this season ended before many fans could yawn their way out of bed.
It’s bad enough that Opening Day is years removed from its rightful place in Cincinnati, only the birthplace of professional baseball.
But Japan?
There is no way the Boston Red Sox and the Oakland A’s should have started the season during the last two days anywhere but Fenway Park, McAfee Coliseum or any other diamond that sits between the Atlantic and the Pacific.
Then again, there is now way this madness involving American professional sports leagues playing games that count on foreign soil is going to stop.
It’s all about the potential for the greedy folks involved with these leagues to add megabucks to their megabucks. So, while the NFL already is holding regular-season games in foreign lands, the NBA is thinking about it, and baseball has joined its football counterpart by actually doing it.
I understand what’s happening here and why it’s happening. I just don’t like it, especially when the most endearing part of what was our national pastime keeps getting belted a few steroid-induced swings toward the ozone.
Tradition.
Once, the baseball opener always was in Cincinnati, and it always was the only game played that day. Now you’ve got this Japan mess, and then you’ll have the Braves becoming part of the “United States” opener on Sunday night against the Nationals in Washington D.C.
Then, on Monday, you’ll have 1:05 p.m. starts for the Kansas City Royals against the Tigers in Detroit and the Toronto Blue Jays against the Yankees in New York.
Then the Reds will play the Arizona Diamondbacks at 2:10 in Cincinnati as mostly an afterthought.
Night games in the World Series starting later and later. The DH rule. Lights in Wrigley Field. Interleague play and wild cards. The Dodgers bolting Dodgertown and the Yankees bolting Yankee Stadium. Opening Days near Tokyo Bay instead of the Ohio River.
Yes, look toward the ozone.
Tradition in baseball is going, going, almost gone.
Not that those greedy folks care.
Permalink | Comments (11) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Terence Moore
Sayonara, baseball tradition
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Baseball used to be a game played with nine men to a side, two managers, four umpires, and the major-league season always opened in Cincinnati. Come to think of it now, that would be sort of like “Gone With the Wind” opening in Valdosta. But Cincinnati had a deal, see.
The first “major league” baseball game was played in Cincinnati on June 1, 1869. The locals, the Red Stockings, eked out a 48-14 victory over Mansfield, whoever Mansfield was. So, several years ago — even the league office isn’t sure when — it became a custom that every major-league season opened in Cincinnati. Nobody played before the Red Stockings, now shortened to Reds. It was just that way. That’s how baseball is, very long on tradition. It just gets into a habit it likes and stays there.
Well, not any longer. Money can change any habit. Eight springs ago the Mets and Cubs opened the season, not in Cincinnati. Guess where? Tokyo. That Tokyo, the guys who gave us Pearl Harbor. Some people don’t like you to bring that up, trade with Japan is so hot. But I’ve got a long memory. I saw what a few bombs can do to our property.
Oh, well, ‘scuse me. It’s just tough to get away from it when you turn on your TV in the morning there are the Boston Red Sox playing the Oakland A’s in the Tokyo Dome. Not only that, but the Red Sox pitcher is Daisuke Matsuzaka, who didn’t grow up in Wampole.
Why not? A Japanese newspaper chain, Yomiuri, foots the bill for this Oriental excursion. Yomiuri is not exactly the Chicago Tribune of Japanese baseball. Yomiuri owns several teams. The Tribune owns only one team, and that team hasn’t been in a World Series since World War II. (Sorry to have to bring that up again.) Yomiuri’s team has been the Yankees of Japan, and I’m not sure, but I think they call themselves the Giants.
About Cincinnati and its dibs on opening day, that went on for years. Then the major leagues expanded from coast to coast, cramping the schedule. Television came in spreading money around like fertilizer, and things began to change. The Reds no longer had a monopoly on opening day. So they were allowed to throw the first pitch before anybody else. That privilege is gone now, but one priority remains — the Reds are always allowed to open the season at home. So much for tradition, of which about all that remains is that the baseball hides are actually sewed together by hand by ladies in some Latin American country.
They no longer play a Hall of Fame game in Cooperstown. The All-Star Game ends when the commissioner says it’s time to go home, even if the score is tied. World Series games start about my bedtime. The schedule is so jacked around that the Braves open the season with a one-game “series” in Washington, where a new ball park is being opened. There, one other tradition still prevails: Presidents still throw out first balls. George Bush gets to start the last game of his eight-year career on the mound.
It would be my guess that in Japan, emperors don’t throw out first balls, or even have any kind of presence at such a sweaty game. I saw a game in the Tokyo Dome once, but it was more dome-shaped then. It now appears to have gone oblong to oblige the new long-ball society. Managers are interchangeable, it seems. Bobby Valentine is still managing a team in Japan, and Trey Hillman, who managed five seasons in Japan, is now managing the Kansas City Royals, which, on the surface, appears to be a demotion.
So that’s where major-league baseball stands today, geographically. Not here in the USA, not in Cincinnati, not even in Kauai, but on the other side of the International Dateline. Heaven only knows where it’s headed next. They tell me they’re building a state of the Soviet stadium in Vladivostok, complete with a video screen as high as the sky, and beer sales. Oh, I forgot tell you this about Cincinnati’s sin. The Red Stockings were expelled from the league in 1880 for selling beer at the park. Think of that!
Permalink | Comments (192) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Furman Bisher
Mature Braves need no big talking
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
As strange as this sounds, the Braves have a better attitude now in regard to October than they did along the way to a record 14 straight division titles. They’ve finished third in the National League East during the two seasons since ending that streak, but for several reasons they’ll return to the playoffs this time around.
Too much hitting. Just enough starting and relief pitching.
A lot of Bobby Cox.
That new attitude.
Well, let’s just say these are mentally different Braves, but only if you join the enlightened in believing Chipper Jones, their prolific slugger who also is their overall leader.
“It’s almost like, in the past, we got satisfied with just winning the division,” said Jones, recalling how the Braves managed only one world championship through the 1990s and the early 21st century, while finishing most seasons during their playoff run with a slew of flips, flops and chokes. Added Jones, “We were just trying to keep the string going each year back then when our belief and our focus should have been a lot higher.”
The point is, according to Jones, the Braves finally get it, and their primary competitors in the NL East still don’t. Just listen to the amateurish words coming from Philadelphia and New York. Before last season, shortstop Jimmy Rollins rushed out of nowhere to proclaim that his Philadelphia Phillies were the team to beat in the division. He said so, despite the Phillies’ reputation as an “almost team” in recent years, and despite the Phillies reaching the playoffs just twice in 25 years, with their last trip in 1993.
The Phillies did take the division, with much help from Rollins as the NL’s Most Valuable Player. It’s just that the Phillies also needed the Mets to do the impossible by butchering a seven-game lead with 17 games left to play.
Speaking of the Mets, center fielder Carlos Beltran forgot this spring that he is normally soft spoken when he boldly said after the Mets acquired the great Johan Santana that his team had replaced the Phillies in the NL East as the one to beat. Teammate Carlos Delgado agreed, adding that he and other Mets have Beltran’s back.
Somewhere, Jones is chuckling between his crooked grins. “The Mets won [the division] in ‘06 and still feel like they should have won it last year, and then you’ve got the Phillies who took advantage of the Mets’ collapse after that, and now everybody is just brimming with this confidence,” Jones said. “My whole thing is, you’ve got all these guys chirping over one division championship, and we won 14 in a row and didn’t say a word.
“Let them talk, but honestly, we’ll set our sights higher. It doesn’t matter to me whether we win the wild card or the division. Been there, done that. We need to set our sights higher than just that.”
There is the NL pennant, for instance, and then there is the World Series, and then there is winning it all after that.
The Braves must settle on making the playoffs first. No problem there, because they have a big three of starting pitchers in Tim Hudson, John Smoltz and Tom Glavine, with nice potential everywhere else. At the plate, Mark Teixeira, Jeff Francoeur, Brian McCann and Jones can rip with anybody. The bullpen has a decent setup man in Peter Moylan and a superb closer in Rafael Soriano.
That means Cox just needs to take the temperature of two players every morning: Soriano, who is recovering from a sore elbow after missing large chunks of three of the past four seasons due to various aches and pains; and Jones, who has spent a bunch of time watching instead of playing for monster stretches since 2004.
“There are just certain people that this team is built around, and if you take them out of the lineup, there’s going to be a major hole,” Jones said. “But, all in all, we’ve got a lot to be encouraged about.”
Yes, the Braves do, and unlike others, they don’t have to yap about it.
Permalink | Comments (45) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Terence Moore
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Seriously, when the injury happened I would have at least had some respect for him if he had shown any emotion at all. If it had been me I’d have been pitching a fit like a six year old. Instead, he just kinda winced and walked away. Not an indication... read the full comment by mike | Comment on You name it, Hampton's had it Read You name it, Hampton's had it
Mike Hampton is cool in my book. I enjoy a criminal of his magnitude. 121 million is quite an impressive amount to steal especially when you do right in front of everyone and no one bats an eye. Seriously, I think the Braves should have Beat Mike... read the full comment by Satan | Comment on You name it, Hampton's had it Read You name it, Hampton's had it
THIS TEAM YOU CALL ATLANTA ILIKED THR TEAM BETTER IN 1978 WITH PHIL NIEKRO,DALEMURPHY , ROYSTER,BIFF POCOROBA, PAULCASANOVA,FELIXMILLAN,CLRTEBOYER,RICKCAMP,RALPHGARR,SONNYJACKSON,THESE PLAYERS GOOD AND THEY PLAYED HURT, THESE CLOWNS NOW,ARE WORTHLESS,IT... read the full comment by WILL | Comment on You name it, Hampton's had it Read You name it, Hampton's had it
Lollygaggers!... read the full comment by mike | Comment on You name it, Hampton's had it Read You name it, Hampton's had it