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Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Spring ball sprouts hope for older trio
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Lake Buena Vista, Fla. — Ah, spring. The lulling sound of that dateline, though there’s not a cupful of water in sight. Once I spent spring training in Winter Garden, which was neither chilly nor heavily vegetated. Another time it was Homestead. Ugh!
You ask the guys who come here on business and it’s not where they are. It’s the pot of gold they’re after. These days, the contracts are all signed and the deal is cut for the headliners, the Joneses, Smoltz, McCann, Francoeur and John Schuerholz’s collection of closers. Bobby Cox has never felt so comfortable with his bullpen. Nor for that matter, with his employment. You’ve read that he plans to manage two more years, then ride off into the sunset.
He doesn’t sound too convinced. Sometimes they bounce it off the wall just to see how it sounds. Then Jack McKeon’s name came up. “You remember,” he was reminded, “Jack came off the farm and won a World Series at the age of 73,” and Bobby just grins.
Baseball isn’t an easy addiction to overcome, and the closer the time comes, the more desperate a guy gets. You’ve been reading about the exploits of Chuck James, Lance Cormier, Kelly Johnson, Martin Prado — he has the camp abuzz — and Scott Thorman, with first base yawning for him. (He looks more like a tight end, big and muscle-tough.) Well, let me tell you about three who were once younger Braves now back where they began. Funny, how guys will go back to the club that first signed them, as if they can reclaim the glow of youth.
Fernando Lunar first came to the Braves in 1994, a 16-year-old from Venezuela, a natural-born catcher. He looked as if he had been born catching. Now, if he could only hit. He was deployed all about the farm system, from Danville up to the Braves, where he went to bat 54 times and hit safely 10. He was traded to Baltimore, where he was an artist behind the bat, but not with it. He was set on the road again and bounced around until he hit rock bottom: Somerset (Mass.) in an independent league. He’s still a young man, as baseball goes, and he’ll get a look.
“I want to get him in a game,” Cox said. “I’m curious.”
Five years ago, Trey Hodges was a likely pitching prospect when he was brought up from Richmond. Out of LSU. Clever, not the hard-ball strikeout kind, but a pitcher who made what he had work. He had a good spring. He had starting potential, but something went wrong. Last season he disappeared from view, and later turned up pitching in the Far East. Now he’s back in his old comfort zone. He pitched two innings the other day, and nobody laid a bat on him. He looked like starting material once, but he’s starting all over again, and he’s still only 28 years old.
Now we come to Joe Winkelsas. You may not remember him. If he hadn’t been a Winkelsas, I probably wouldn’t. Joe is a right-handed pitcher — he has a left-handed personality, with all the quirks — who came to camp first in 1996, out of Elon College, so the book says. Joe has bounced around more than a pinball in one of those machines. He has made 18 team changes in his career, with one brief stop in Atlanta in his course of running the gamut of the system. His career with the Braves came to one-third of an inning. He spent the last month of the ‘06 season with Milwaukee.
Joe’s 33 now, and you probably won’t be seeing him at Turner Field this year. He must have felt like there was no place like where he started, and he’s back again.
And Fernando, Trey and Joe are just a few who look to the guys who gave them their first start to start over again.
Oh, I should have pointed out that while all the fuss is being made over the Japanese fireballer Daisuke Matsuzaka of the Red Sox, the Braves have not been left at the post. They have Jung Ji Cho, who was 4-2 at Danville two years ago, then came down wounded. But a guy with a 0.93 ERA is worth keeping around just to see.
Besides, he costs a heckuva lot less than Daisuke.
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Stallone, injured Braves and BowserGate
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
THE TUESDAY COUNTDOWN ….
10: Paul Hewitt is playing it right. Georgia Tech is in no position to complain about being a 10th seed. But after watching the ACC tournament, my question is: Who does Mike Krzyzewski have pictures of? Because that’s the only explanation for Duke getting a sixth seed.
9: One starting pitcher (Mike Hampton) is out two months after getting hurt swinging a bat. Another potential starter (Kyle Davies) is so wild that he must be throwing to a plate in Richmond. Chipper Jones already has a sprained ankle. When does Bobby Cox announce, “You know, I was going to wait two years to retire. But I just got this really cool deal on cruise tickets, and since I’m already down there in Florida - whoa, look at that time …”
8: Sylvester Stallone has been charged with importing “performance and image enhancing drugs” (48 vials of HGH) in Australia (from one of the best sites on the web: Deadspin.com). So far, there has been no uproar from Hollywood on bad actors compromising the integrity of B movies. But it makes you wonder how many more movies John Wayne could’ve made.
7: So in the latest chapter of BowserGate, police say that Johnathan Babineaux’s story about how his girlfriend’s bowser ended up dead is “inconsistent” with the evidence. I hate this legal details. Unfortunately, this is what happens when a dog is found in Gwinnett County and not Dade County.
6: The dog’s name, and I’m not making this up, was “Kilo.” What was second choice? Dime Bag? Quick Fix? Cheech? Chong? Particulates?
5: I understand from a business standpoint why the Thrashers will start selling playoff tickets Friday. But given the backdrop of the first six seasons, isn’t this a little like being the first developer to build condos near a fault line?
4: That said, OK: The Thrashers will make the playoffs. They have a good chance to win the division. The trades Don Waddell made at the deadline were just what this team needed and confirmed his existence — which, of course, differentiates Waddell from the rumor that is Billy Knight.
3: Viagra announced it has pulled its sponsorship of Major League Baseball. But commissioner Bud Selig downplayed the significance, saying it’s nothing a little vitamin E and five minutes on the Internet can’t fix.
2: I have thought long and hard about this and I can’t come up with one single reason why the Atlanta Spirit (Belkin or non-Belkin) would keep Knight. So I need your help bloggers. For just one moment, try to channel a deluded Knight-backer and provide me with one. The best answer wins a Speedy Claxton jersey (seldom used).
1: Florida, UCLA, North Carolina, Long Beach State (former campus home to Jerry Tarkanian, and me).
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