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Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Buddy’s 2nd win a longtime coming
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
When you go to the ballpark to watch a game between two pitchers with a collective record of 6-18, you’re not expecting a classic. As in Spahn and Koufax, or Hubbell and Dean. In fact, you’re wondering how these two happened even to be here, in Turner Field on a Tuesday afternoon.
The Braves were in desperation mode. Their guy was Earl L. Carlyle, who goes by the playground name of “Buddy” in the trade. If Bobby Cox had a full house of healthy starters, Buddy Carlyle would have been in Pawtucket, where the Richmond farm club was playing last night. On the other hand, take Fredi Gonzales’ situation with the Marlins. His starter was Sergio Mitre, who had to be pulled after four innings against the Cubs his last time out. Something to do with a hamstring, one of those infernal things.
Of the six games Mitre and Carlyle have won, five belong to the Marlins pitcher. Carlyle won his one game in relief, pitching for the Padres in 1999. For a guy 28 years old, the right-hander has a lot of mileage on his odometer. Twice he has pitched in Asia, first with the Hanshin Tigers in Japan, then, just last year, with a team called the LG Twins in Korea.
The Braves picked him up off the street last December, with the Richmond club in mind.
If you checked all the asterisks on the Braves roster, you’d get an idea of why they are in such a pitching bind. Mike Hampton hasn’t thrown a pitch in a pennant race in two years. Mike Gonzalez, thought to be a real catch from Pittsburgh, instead became another surgical case, as is Tanyon Sturtze, whom you haven’t seen throw a pitch. He was sort of an investment in futures, I’d guess. Lance Cormier just tried to make it back, but too soon. John Smoltz removed himself from action last week, and he was to give his business arm a test later in the evening.
But the Braves’ story is Buddy Carlyle, and you’ve gotta like it. He doesn’t blow you down with heat, Sometimes the big meter in left field registered in the 70s, but when he came in with his flame-thrower, the Marlins were shocked.
In seven innings they touched him for just one hit, damaging though it was. It was a home run by Aaron Boone in the third inning, and the game teetered on that thin line until the Braves came to bat in the seventh. Carlyle had filled the pitching void gloriously, given his team seven good innings, but still he was losing, 1-0.
Fate owed him something, and fate was about to pay off. Jeff Francoeur singled, one of his three hits. Scott Thorman popped out trying to bunt, and now came the kid, rookie Jarrod Saltalamacchia, whom the Braves have to fit in some place. Today he was the catcher, his natural trade. He looked at Angel Pinto’s first place, and he liked it.
The ball sailed like a rocket into the left-field stands, and if that wasn’t enough, Chris Woodward followed with another home run, and the scales of justice had balanced. Carlyle was staked to a 3-1 gift. The sparse gallery, a little over 21,000, was so elated it broke out into a wave, something you don’t see around here much anymore.
The rest was left up to the April-and-September battery of the moose Bob Wickman, 38, and the kid Saltalamacchia, 22, and they sauntered off into the glow of twilight. Which, I might add, had been blessed by spray of rain, not enough to hint salvation, but encouraging. The beautiful part of it all in the end was that the playing took only two hours and 20 minutes.
Now, that’s real baseball, played in the loveliness of a Georgia afternoon.
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Falcons should’ve tried to get Johnson
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
The Falcons’ collection of draft picks this spring weren’t bad. In fact, they were pretty good.
You can start with exceptionally quick Jamaal Anderson at defensive end. You can move to Justin “Big Bank” Blalock as a welcomed giant among dwarfs along the offensive line. You can continue with the nice potential of cornerback Chris Houston, wide receiver Laurent Robinson and linebacker Stephen Nicholas.
Mostly, you can envision seven, eight or maybe nine of the Falcons’ 11 picks overall starting someday.
It’s just that the Falcons didn’t get Calvin Johnson.
They didn’t even try.
“I mean, how in the world could you not even try to get this guy?” said Shawn Jefferson, the former Falcons wide receiver, who isn’t exactly displeased with his old team’s negligence. Jefferson is entering his third season as an offensive assistant with the Detroit Lions, and his new team did get Johnson in the NFL draft.
The Lions have had the all-everything wide receiver from Georgia Tech via Sandy Creek High School in Tyrone for slightly more than a month. Even so, they’ve seen enough of Johnson in mini-camps and organized team activities (OTAs) to determine that the league’s worst team over the past six seasons just got that much closer to the middle of the pack and beyond. They’ve discovered what many of us have known forever, and that is, Johnson, the person, is as sensational as Johnson, the player.
No wonder Jefferson spoke of Johnson as if he were his second son.
“We all knew he was an exceptional talent, but he’s better than we thought, and he’s a great young man,” said Jefferson, the Falcons’ vocal leader during his three seasons with the team through 2002. “If a meeting starts at 8 o’clock in the morning, Calvin is there at 7:45, just waiting on everybody else. He’s always the first to arrive and the last to leave. What a role model and a perfect individual to build your team around.”
Translated: The suddenly image-damaged Falcons blew it.
Big time.
Maybe you’ve heard about Michael Vick and this dogfighting thing. Well, with the gifted Johnson and his brilliant smile on the Falcons’ roster, this latest and ugliest in a string of controversies for No. 7 isn’t barking as loudly.
The Falcons could have used a combination of their No. 8 pick overall during the draft and their two second-round picks to grab that No. 2 pick overall from Detroit. They could have proceeded to get one Michael Jordan instead of several Sam Bowies. They could have gone from a pretty good draft to a pretty great one. They could have gotten Calvin Johnson, and remember the words we just typed. Then again, you won’t be able to forget them: The Falcons could have gotten Calvin Johnson. You’ll hear that often during the next few weeks, months, years and even decades.
That’s because Johnson has the size, speed and skills to reach Canton as more than a visitor. In part, the words below Johnson’s bronzed bust should read, “And even though he was an Atlanta native and did many miracles at Georgia Tech and dreamed of playing for the hometown Falcons, he was drafted by somebody else.”
Jefferson still is pinching himself, along with his bosses. They’ve been doing so since their phone never rang in their war room during the 15 minutes they were on the clock for the first round. They didn’t hear from the Denver Broncos, Washington Redskins or Tampa Bay Buccaneers, three of the several teams who hinted before the draft of calling. Most strikingly, they didn’t hear from the Falcons who needed Johnson for so many reasons. “They really could use a big-time wide receiver, couldn’t they?” said Jefferson, already knowing the answer to his question.
Nobody knows the answer to this: How loudly will Falcons fans scream every time the guy they could have had does something greater than great?
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Donovan deserves to be sanctioned
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
THE TUESDAY COUNTDOWN…
10: Went to CNN.com. They’ve posted a video, “How Paris Hilton spent last hours of freedom.” Where have you gone, Wolf Blitzer?
9: If Billy Donovan ends up claiming he rushed into a decision about originally taking the Orlando job, it would qualify as Grade A Bunk. The man has been considering his next career step since Florida won its second title (and, logically, actually was thinking about it even before). He flirted with Kentucky. He flirted with Memphis. He thought long and hard about making the jump to the NBA before the Magic came calling with a $27.5 million contract.
8: But maybe some good will come of all this. If the NBA really decides to “ban” Donovan from coaching in the league for five years, as ESPN has reported, it would be the first time any governing body takes some sort of action against a flip-flopping coach. As my peeps would say: Mazel Tov!
7: How about this as a follow-up? Any time a coach leaves his college team with three, four, five years left on his contract, the NCAA bans him from a Division I job for the same three, four, five years?
6: CSI Surry reports that three plasma TVs were stolen from Michael Vick’s former house in Virginia. But investigators managed to lift a clean paw print and found Milk-Bone particulates leading to the driveway.
5: We don’t know if Vick will get charged, or convicted, or suspended, or told to sit, roll over or play dead. But in case you’re wondering, a sports gambling website is taking bets on at least one of those scenarios. According to Bodog, “no suspension” ranks as a very slight favorite (5-6) over a three or four-game suspension (even money). A one or two game suspension is 3-2 against; five to eight games is 5-2; over eight games is 7-2.
4: And, on a related note: Bodog has set the over-under on Falcons’ wins next season at 7 1/2. Not sure if that’s Joey Harrington-aided.
3: Tank Johnson shouldn’t be too upset about the eight-game suspension Roger Goddell just gave him. He’s going to need the time to bring down his cholesterol and percentage of body fat. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Johnson spent $700 on vending machine food during his two months in prison. The partial breakdown: 162 beef sticks, 40 honey buns, 35 blocks of summer sausage, 35 bags of barbecue chips. The newspaper speculated he also might have tried to piece together a Mexican combo plate, with nine tortillas, nine packages of jalapeno cheese and six packages of refried beans.
2: One more win by the Ducks and the last three Stanley Cup winners will have been Tampa Bay, Carolina and Anaheim. Doesn’t seem to be helping the TV ratings.
1: From an Associated Press news story: “Hilton’s booking photo showed the heiress wearing what appeared to be a V-neck shirt, eye makeup and lip gloss that highlighted a slight smile. Her long blond hair was draped over one shoulder.” Thank you, Mr. Cronkite.
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