Television: Sox Appeal

The New England Sports Network (NESN) launches, Sox Appeal, a reality show that seeks to help baseball fans find like minded loves.
An article in the July 31 New York Times describes it as

One part “Fever Pitch,” the other part “The Bachelor,” “Sox Appeal” takes a citizen — or hero, in the show’s vernacular — of that “ultimate manic-depressive fan base,” as the NESN analyst and former star Red Sox pitcher Dennis Eckersley has put it, known as Red Sox Nation and matches him (or her; there are women heroes) with three blind dates for two innings each.At the seventh-inning stretch the hero chooses the person he would like to spend the rest of the game with and then announces his decision by holding up a sign that is broadcast on
the stadium’s giant video screen. Afterward the hero and his potential love match are shown walking into the sunset, albeit with none of the gooey follow-up common to other dating shows.

The program also features “advice” from such unlikekly sources as NESN commentators Don Orsillo and Jerry Remy to dating advice offered by players like the knuckleball pitcher Tim Wakefield.

Sox Appeal debuts August 1, after the Red Sox-Orioles game.

 

Baseball on the Tube

The July 23 issue of TV Guide  highlights the ESPN miniseries, The Bronx is Burning.

The piece also pays homage to the TV baseball events that came before including:

• 61*  — A 2001 HBO film starring Barry Pepper as Roger Maris  in pursuit of the single season home run record held by the beloved Babe Ruth. Pepper does a nice job portraying the increasing frustration over the course of the season, as Maris faced opposition from pitchers, fans, and baseball hierarchy as he approached the mark.
• Jason Alexander’s slacker character, George Costanza, managed to snare a position with the New York Yankees, but one of the best shows featured a 1992 guest shot by Keith Hernandez as the object of Jerry’s “man crush.” A priceless gag was the Kramer-Newman “loogie” conspiracy theory, with Roger McDowell.
• Ball Four – In 1976, CBS tried to take advantage of the popularity of Jim Bouton’s watershed behind-the-scenes look at his profession. Bouton starred as himself and didn’t do too terrible a job, but this became the first in a short line of failed baseball-themed series.
• Clubhouse (2004) was probably doomed from the start. If you can’t get people to watch about baseball player, it’s not surprising that they wouldn’t warm to a show about a batboy.
• Bay City Blues – a short-lived series featured an impressive cast, including Ken Olin, Sharon Stone, Michael Nouri, Kevin (Invasion of the Body Snatchers) McCarthy, Sheree North, Dennis Franz, and Bernie Casey, among others, from the mind of Steve Bochco.

Baseball players have made appearances on dozens of shows through the years. For example:

• Leo Durocher appeared on The Munsters
• Don Drysdale, The Donna Reed Show (Willie Mays, too, although on a separate episode)
• Jim Lefebvre and Wes Parker as cannibals on Gilligan’s Island (!)

Review: The Last Best League

This review appeared on the Sports Literature Association Web site in August, 2004.

The Last Best League: One Summer, One Season, One Dream, by Jim Collins. Da Capo, 2004. 288pp. $24.00 (cloth), ISBN 0738209015.

Reviewed by Ron Kaplan

The ballplayers on the Chatham As of the Cape Cod League are on the cusp. All of them, up to this point, have enjoyed great success, whether in high school, college or other amateur leagues. But this is “the last best league” and it is an honor just to be invited. For many, this is the final season to fine-tune their skills before hopefully moving to the professional ranks. Few are called, fewer are chosen.

The parallels between The Last Best League and the 2002 movie Summer Catch are undeniable, although the author claims his concept came first. These are young men barely out of high school, testing themselves against a higher class of pitchers or batters. They must also be content with the almost inevitable drop-off that converting to wooden bats brings, since most, if not all, are used to the power and confidence metal bats offer. They are in for a rude awakening.

The concept of focusing on one team for a single season is not new, but Collins, a former editor of Yankee Magazine, seems to humanize his subjects more than most. The reader sees the players as Jekylls and Hydes, on and off the field, dealing with matters some would consider mundane, but for whom such issues as balancing a checkbook and buying food is a new experience.

The Last Best League also considers the people behind the scenes, the men and women who open up their homes to these strangers, who give them jobs, who run the leagues, all out of a love for the game, since financial remuneration is practically nonexistent.
As the summer comes to a close, TLBL serves as a reminder of old-tyme America: small towns, Fourth of July parades, Mom and pop stores, and apple-pie.

Lucid Culture review of Big Papi

A fairly uncomplimentary review of David Ortiz’s book appears on the Lucid Cultre blog.

It seems unfair to hold such books up to standards of other biographical titles. After all these are increasingly written by and about younger people whose accomplishments , for all the glitz and attention, are relatively unimportant on the grand scale of things. (And this is coming from a fan!)

Briefly…

Two items on Playing America’s Game: Baseball, Latinos and the Color Line, by Adrian Burgos Jr. ( University of California Press).

The San Francisco Giants had several distinguihsed Latinos on the roster since they arrived in California in 1957, including Juan Maricahl, Orlando Cepeda, Jose Pagan, and the Alou Brothers, so it is fitting that the San Francisco Chronicle notes the city’s place in history in this “superb and, in many ways, pathbreaking history of Latinos in professional baseball,” crediting the success of the franchise to Alejandro “Alex” Pompez, a Cuban-American scout and former Negro League executive.

Newreads.blogspot.com has a brief item, based on a press release from the publisher.

Take a blook at this…

According to Wikipedia:

A blook can refer to either an object manufactured to imitate a bound book, an online book published via a blog, or a printed book that contains or is based on content from a blog.

The term “blook” has been actively used since the 1990s, by librarian/ collector, Mindell Dubansky, to describe unique or manufactured objects and ephemera that are made in imitation of a bound book or several bound books standing together. A blook is replica of a book and has no text. The term “blook” is a shortening of “looks like a book.”

Blooking.blogspot.com takes a look at this phenominon as it applies to the Cardinals (A Redbirds Nation Reader, by Brian Gunn), Red Sox (Bleeding Red: A Red Sox Fan’s Diary of the 2004 Season by Derek Catsam); Padres (Ducksnorts 2007 Baseball Annual, by Geoff Young), and Dodgers (The Best of Dodger Thoughts, by Jon Weisman), as well as The Hardball Times annuals.

Cheryl Hagedorn, who hosts the Blooking blog, is more interested in the whys and wherefores of turning the blogs into books than the actual content. Not necessarily great baseball, but interesting as far as the way the publishing industry works.

Shag Crawford, 1916-2007

Henry Charles “Shag” Crawford, an NL umpire from 1956-75, died on July 11. He was 90.

Crawford, whose brother, Joey, was an NBA official, called more than 3,000 games, worked in three World Series three times, two NL championship series, and three All-Star games. He became an iconic figure in photographs of San Francisco Giants’ pitcher Juan Marichal going after Los Angeles Dodgers catcher Johnny Roseboro with a bat. In this picture, Sandy Koufax risks injury as he steps in to play peacemaker.

HBO Real Sports did a segment in its February 12, 2007 edition on Shag Crawford and his sons, Jerry and Joe. Shag didn’t look well at all at that point, but the pride he had in his boys was evident.

Larry R. Gerlach includes Crawford in his oral history The Men in Blue: Conversations with Umpires (Viking, 1980; reprinted by the University of Nebraska Press, 1994). Crawford tells a story of happenstance, of being in the right place at the right time when he was picked to move to the majors after being on the verge of giving up his dream.

In addition to the Giants-Dodgers contre-temps, Crawford was involved in another controversial game in the 1969 World Series between the Baltimore Orioles and the NY Mets in which he ejected O’s manager Earl Weaver for arguing balls and strikes. A rule is a rule, said Crawford, while admitting his concern about following the letter of the law in such a high-profile situation.

Crawford was also a leader in the umpires’ union and his career may have suffered for it, perhaps playing a role in his exit from the game.

Briefly…

Some quick thoughts from Ron Brown of the Bangor Daily News on Big Papi.

***

Deadspin, among other blogs, offers a lengthy inter-office memo to ESPN employees.  It’s always interesting to get a “behind-the-scenes” peek at what goes on, especially in environments we think we would love to be privy to. For me, like many enamoured with sports, the realization (finally) set in that a career on the playing field was not in the cards (people of a ceratin age root for aging players like Julio Franco, Jesse Orosco, and Hoyt Wilhelm: as long as there was someone still playing at their age, there was still hope. Yeh, right.) But then to learn that the grass isn’t always greener in these high-profile, all-access vocations…what a downer.

***

From Cincinnati.com, a story about Tom Brucato, local author of Baseball Skippers and Their Crews. The History of Every Major League Manager and Coach, 1871-2007 (St. Johann Press).

 

Now hear this: Audible.com’s “All Star” podcast

This is Audible, an annoyingly double-entendred podcast, devoted its July 10 episode to several baseball audio books,including:

• The Big Bam, an unabridged version of Leigh Montville’s 2006 biography on Babe Ruth. After an excerpt from narrator Scott Brick, the podcast’s host, Josephine Reed, conducts a telephone interview with the author that sounds as if it was heavily edited, as if she reworded her questions to fit in with his remarks. For an entity that counts so much on sounds, the presentation is very forced. (You can hear a sample here.)

• The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It, by Lawrence Ritter. Ritter is the granddaddy of audio/oral histories, setting the stage for those who came later, including Ken Burns. The excerpt includes his interview with Fred Snodgrass, a member of the New York Giants in the early part of the 20th century. (One thing I’ll say about TIA: they don’t skimp on the excerpts, as do some other audiobook sources.) Ritter, who schlepped around a large reel-to-reel tape recorder for his interviews, gets Snodgrass to tell an amusing story about Charles Victory Faust. Ritter’s other subjects are similarly charming, belying the image of ignorant, ill-spoken athletes. (Hear a sample here.)

• Bums, by Peter Golenbock. Golenbock, who came under scrutiny earlier this year for his salacious novel about Mickey Mantle, produced massive oral histories about several ball clubs, including the Cubs, Red Sox, Yankees, and Mets. In Bums, which originally came out shortly after Roger Kahn’s The Boys of Summer, he analyzes the Brooklyn Dodgers. Raymond Todd serves as narrator of this unabridged audiobook and, judging by the excerpt, does a good job in providing numerous “voices” representative of the people interviewed by the author. (Hear a sample here.)

• Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball’s Last Hero, by David Maraniss. This audiobook is narrated by the author in an abridged version. While writers might not be professional performers, they lend a certain credibility to the project. Having written the words, they no doubt know how the aural portion should sound. Reed conducts an in-person interview with him, and it comes off much better, more natural than the one with Montville. (Hear a sample here.)

This special All-Star program is downloadable via iTunes and should be available soon at audible.com.

Briefly

Minor Leaguers spend quality time with young fans: Two members of the Harrisonburg (Va.) Turks took time out to read to their young followers.

***

As Barry Bonds approaches the all-time home run Mark, there seems to be more press about Hank Aaron, as if to compare the two: one genial and genuine, the other surly and steroid-assisted.
The Borders chain has released  The Hammer: The Best of Hank Aaron from the Pages of Sports Illustrated, a store-exclusive.
Over the past several years, SI has used its archives to produce timely coverage of major events, such as World Series and other championship winners. They have also marked the passing of such icons as Ted Williams and Mickey Mantle. Hank Aaron is a cute little book, containing reprints of stories about him beginning in 1957 and ending in 1994. I would have preferred a glossy, magazine-size collection of the orignal articles. I’m just saying…

***

This story from the Brookline (Mass.) Tab about a female Red Sox fan working on a book about female Red Sox fans.

***

Review: Baseball Forever

Ralph Kiner, a fixture in the Mets broadcast booth since their debut in 1962, was honored on July 14 with a “night.” A mix of baseball celebrities were on hand, including former Mets players (Bud Harrelson, Ed Kranepool, Rusty Staub, Jerry Koosman, Ed Charles, and Tom Seaver, who did a fairly shaky job in his remarks, fellow media (former teammate Bob Friend and Keith Hernandez; Marty Noble penned a nice piece on MLB.Com), and stars from Kiner’s generation (Yogi Berra and Bob Feller).

It gives me a chance to rerun a review of his most recent book Baseball Forever: Reflections of 60 Years in the Game, (written with Danny Peary. Triumph Books, 2004), that originally appeared in the Spring 2005 edition of Nine.

---

Ralph Kiner was smart enough to realize early on that an athletic avocation is usually short-lived and uncertain. Yet he contradicts this notion in Baseball Forever as he reminisces about his sixty-five-year association with the national pastime.

Kiner was the premier slugger of his day. Over his ten-season career, curtailed by back injuries, he led the National League in home runs seven consecutive years. Not even the mighty Babe had enjoyed such a streak. Kiner finished with 369 round-trippers and was voted into the Hall of Fame in 1975.

In many ways Kiner was ahead of his time. Considered opinion of his era (1946-55) eschewed swimming, golf, and weightlifting for players, yet Kiner employed these activities as part of his off-season regime. On a more intellectual level he became an integral part of the fledgling players’ movement, fighting for improved conditions and salaries.

Blessed with movie star looks Kiner could have been the poster boy for Nike’s old “Chicks dig the long ball” advertising campaign. When someone pointed out that he didn’t hit for much of an average (.279, a low figure for a superstar), he often quipped, “Singles hitters drive Fords; home run hitters drive Cadillacs.”

After retiring as a player Kiner relearned the game from a front office perspective, serving as the general manager for the Minor League San Diego Padres before beginning his apprenticeship as a broadcaster.

Baseball Forever is not a typical autobiography. Kiner juxtaposes his own experiences with the modern game. He uses the same folksy ease in his book as he does on the air, with his chapters on such topics as the athlete-celebrity connection, the mania over home runs, and “The Future, Then and Now.” His chapter on baseball’s slow progress at integration is particularly thoughtful. He is also quite candid on the subject of drugs. “People who believe that there were no drugs in baseball at all in my time are misinformed,” writes Kiner. “There were. In the forties and fifties, we had Benzedrine and Dexedrine. A large percentage of players took them … because they could keep you awake and alert. I admit I took them.”

Kiner was one of the New York Mets’ inaugural announcers. From 1962, when the team debuted, to 1979, he shared both television and radio chores with Bob Murphy and Lindsey Nelson–the longest-running trio of announcers in pro sports. (Murphy retired in 2003, leaving Kiner as the only link to the Mets’ first season.)

Kiner was the prototypical ex-jock, engaged to comment on the game in relationship to his own playing days. Despite the occasional flub or malapropism, he has been one of the constants in Mets fans’ lives. In spite of his membership in the media fraternity, Kiner is empathetic to those athletes who refuse interviews. In his day the press developed relations with athletes and kept their remarks almost exclusively to what happened on the field. Nowadays there is little in the way of celebrity privacy. Everything is fair game for discussion, especially those salacious bits of off-the-field “human interest.”

“I think players are less forthcoming … because it’s very hard to say anything ‘off the record’ anymore,” Kiner observes. “You can tell a reporter whom you trust something very personal, and he will keep to his promise not to write anything, but he’ll give the information to another reporter who will put it in his column. That’s done a lot, which is why some players decided it’s just easier not to talk to anybody.”

Baseball Forever, written in collaboration with Danny Peary, whose previous baseball titles include the brand-new 1001 Reasons to Love Baseball and Cult Baseball Players: The Greats, the Flakes, the Weird and the Wonderful, serves as a reminder that the game is not just what happens today but also the memories, history, and lore of past generations. Kiner and his contemporaries muse about the current state of baseball: “When we have one of those moments when we can’t figure out how today’s game relates to the game we once played, someone will remind us, ‘The pitcher still stands 60′6″ from the batter, and there are still 27 outs and no time limit.’… The game hasn’t really changed at all. It’s just different.”

Review: Birdie: Confessions of a Baseball Nomad

Birdie: Confessions of a Baseball Nomad by Birdie Tebbetts and James Morrison. (Triumph Books, 2002.)

By his own description, George “Birdie” Tebbetts was a “Joe”–that is, he wasn’t the type of player who could hit 40 home runs or bat .300 or win any awards: “Joes are the guys who win you the pennant.”

Tebbetts may not have won many flags in his long career as a player, manager (his picture when he was skipper of the Cincinnati Reds graced the cover of TIME magazine in 1957), and scout, but he was a member of the small fraternity of those men who devoted their entire professional lives to the game.
A compulsive diarist, Birdie, with the help of his cousin James Morrison, wrote this autobiography a short time before he passed away in 1999.

Born in Burlington, Vermont, in 1912, Tebbetts developed into a steady, if not outstanding, catcher for the Tigers (under the tutelage of the great Mickey Cochrane). He became something of a journeyman, moving on to Boston and Cleveland before calling it quits as a player.

He considers himself lucky to call such men as Ted Williams, Fred Hutchinson, and Hank Greenberg teammates and friends. The description of his relationship with Hutchinson, who died of cancer at age forty-eight, is especially touching in a generation during which men internalized their feelings.

To make it as a “lifer,” one has to be especially observant. Tebbetts shares some of these insightful and amusing observations, and not just with the standard, common-sense, by-the-numbers cliches on which writers-cum-ballplayers seem to rely. Breaking away from the pat descriptions of veterans returning from World War II to reclaim their jobs to appreciative fans, Tebbetts comes right out to say that some of the replacement players “had on occasion told us they were sorry the war ended as quickly as it did. They knew as soon as it was over their ride was over.”

Tebbetts was proud of his accomplishments as a catcher, handling some of the greatest pitchers and staffs of all time: Spahn, Newhouser, Grove, Feller, and Lemon. His description of the responsibilities of the backstop is almost poetic. He notes with disdain the way modern catchers try to “frame” pitches, pulling in balls out of the strike zone with the hope of getting the call. He suggests, in a Casey Stengel kind of way, that

[if it's] a ball and it doesn’t mean that much, make a ball out of it! The umpire is going to like that. And when you really need it, you get a ball that far off, and he’s expecting you to catch it in the ball zone, but instead you pull it into the strike zone, instead of saying “Ball!” he says “Strike!” but he knows that up to that time you haven’t been framing, so he thinks it’s a strike.

In other words, have respect for the umpire and bide your time. (These sentiments are eerily restated by the Mets’ Mike Piazza in the April 15 issue of ESPN The Magazine.)

Birdie elaborates on the special relationship between catchers and umpires, noting that no other player spends as much time in proximity to the men in blue. He preaches courtesy and honesty or, as he puts it, “chivalry at home plate.” He tells the story of helping out an umpire who was still suffering occasional dizzy spells from the lingering effects of a gas attack in World War I and was having a difficult time seeing pitches one day. In a display of compassion that seems unbelievable today, both Birdie and the opposing catcher conspired to help out the arbiter: if the catchers raised their right hands, the call would be a strike; if they lifted the left, it was a ball. This allowed the umpire time to gather his wits and ultimately keep his job.

Tebbetts also takes partial credit for ending the practice of having photographers roaming the field during the game. Up to that point the shutterbugs were allowed to gather close to the action. An on-field argument between Tebbetts and an umpire wound up in the paper the following day, breaking the unwritten dictum of not blabbing to the press about such things. Each man thought the other guilty of violating the code when in fact it was a nearby photographer who was responsible for the breach of etiquette. Shortly thereafter National League president Warren Giles enforced the ban.

Birdie is an especially rewarding bio, coming from a regular guy who was lucky enough to spend his life doing what he loved. When asked how he would like to be remembered when he passes away, Tebbetts responded, “I’m just a baseball guy. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to be.”

The only disappointing aspect of the book is that it is too short. With the life Tebbetts led, and the entertaining, straight-shooting way he describes it, the book could have easily been twice as long and no fan would complain.

This review appeared in the Spring 2003 issue of Nine.

Audio interview: Curt Smith on MLB.com

Curt Smith, author of The Voice, was interviewed on MLB.com.

Georgia’s Favorite Yiddisher Son, et al

From the July/August 2006 issue of American Jewish Life, an Atlanta-based publication, this profile of Ron Blomberg on the release of his memoir, Designated Hebrew.

The May/June 2007 issue features several baseball stories, including:

• “Why Every American Jew Should Love the Boston Red Sox and Hate the New York Yankees: the Annotated Edition“, by Bradford R. Pilcher
• “(Mis)Adventures in Sports Writing“, also by Pilcher and also annotated, which really translates to footnotes, but which are more amusing and less academic in scope.
• “If You Build It…“, John Torres’ profile of 41-year-old Eric Holtz and his dream to play the new Israel Baseball League. (As of this writing, Holzt, a member of the Bet Shemesh Blue Sox, is batting .097, with 3 hits in 31 at bats.)

Some All-Star Game Notes

PRE-GAME

FOX’s introduction — a bunch of players talking over each other about how special the All Star game is — made me think of James Earl Jones’ monologue in Field of Dreams; it even had that treacly FoD/The Natural music in the background.

As much of a fan as I am, I found myself wondering, “who are these guys?” I could understand staying away from the Yankees and Mets, stepping back from an East Coast-centric adulation, but I didn’t recognize a single player. If you want to promote these deserving players from around the majors, some IDs at the bottom of the frame would have been helpful. And for all the Hispanic players on the rosters, there seemed to be an under-representation during the intro.

The pre-game locker room pep talks from Tony LaRussa and Jim Leyland were interesting. Nice shot of Ichiro’s interpreter doing his job (more on that later).

You had to feel badly for that poor guy who tried to hit balls off a team in a Taco-Bell-sponsored contest. The pressure must have gotten to him (unless he just plain sucked) as the crowd booed his dismal efforts to get the ball into their air to win beacoup dollars. His first attempt again reminded me of a scene in FoD in which Costner muffs his first attempt to hit a fungo to Shoeless Joe Jackson.

Since baseball is rooted so deeply in history, it was also nice to have Derek Jeter and Ken Griffey Jr. paying their respects to Willie Mays (Jeter respectfully referring to him as “Mr. Mays) in an interview.

Not to be too catty, but I find the pre-game team of Jeanne Zelasko, Kevin Kennedy, and Eric Karros most annoying. And what’s with Karros’ “Braniac” forehead/hair cut? I know it’s part of their job to shill for FOX, which is why I prefer games on ESPN or other sports channels because the viewer is safe from the inspipid promotion of other stations’ non-sports programs. The plugging of the upcoming Simpsons movie. Case in point: Zelasko’s “interview” with Homer (although the cartoon depictions of some of the players were cool; Maglio Ordonez = Sideshow Bob?).

At least FOX didn’t have reporters in the stands chatting up actors (”And here’s Keifer Sutherland, star of 24. Some, Keifer, which do you think Jack Bauer would more nerve-wracking? Fighting atomic terrorists or facing Billy Wagner?”)

The player introductions were a bit unusual, queing up between third and second and second and first rather than the traditional first and third baselines. Giants’ manager Bruce Bochy, serving as an NL coach, got a nice ovation and the first crowd shots by FOX. Of course, Bonds got the biggest hand of the players. “Here you go, San Francisco…,” said the PA announcer.

The formation made it easy for the players to stroll to center field in a nice orderly fashion to greet Mays after an odd rendition of the National Anthem by Chris Issak, accompanied by one of his band members. (I wonder how much it costs — and who pays for it — to have those jets fly in formation over stadiums at sporting events?)

At least Mays was able to walk in under his own power, unlike Ted Williams, who needed a golf cart. I thought his “Say Hey” jacket was a bit undignified, but undoubtedly it will garner a nice bit of change somewhere down the line. He peeled that off, revealing a Giants’ jersey that seemed to be autographed (more money). Rather than throw the ceremonial first pitch from the mound, he threw it from center to Jose Reyes, for whom he also signed the ball, a nice gesture.

Mays then boarded a pink Cadillac in which there were a couple of boxes of balls. Being the cynical guy I am, I envisioned those also being peddled at some memorabilia show, but I was wrong. Mays tossed them to the crowd, gave one to a cop on the field, and another to umpire Bruce Froemming, who will retire at the end of the season.

The first pitch came at 8:54 EST. On the other hand, the festivities started at 5:00 local time, which must have seemed odd for those in attendance.

Cal Ripken Jr. and Ozzie Smith were somewhat wooden as they read the starting lineups for the AL and NL teams respectively. Ozzie Smith? Seems that Tony Gwynn would have been a better pairing with Ripken, since they’re both being undicuted into the Hall of Fame in a few weeks. I’m sure FOX producers thought of that and Gwynn was just too busy to attend.

POST-GAME

In the postgame show, with very few people remaining in the stands, Zelasko served as MC while Commissioner Seilg presented Ichiro with the MVP award. Some unidentified representative from Chevy made a very dramatic presentation by…drawing…out… each…phrase (”New …2008.. Chevy…Tahoe…Hybrid”).

Ichiro certainly had a productive day, hitting the first inside-the-park home run in AS history hours after signing a multi, multi-million dollar extension to remain a Mariner.

The home run, courtesy of YouTube. (Have patience, it takes awhile while Brain Roberts works out a walk before Ichiro comes up).

Pardon me, but how long has Ichiro been playing in the U.S.? But there he was, with an interpreter, fielding Zalaskie’s questions, along the lines of “Did you know you had the first inside-the-park home run” etc. This dragged out the interview even longer. Since such queries are basically the same game after game, why not have Kevin Costner teach Ichiro how to work those cliches, like he did in Bull Durham?

“He loves you, San Francisco. He can hit home runs and he’s gonna be a free agent,” Zelasko said at the end of the interview. Wince.

Who’s airing the game next year?