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| Friday, September 15 | ||||||
| Little guys worry about job security ESPN.com | ||||||
When we think of what a second baseman is supposed to be, we do not
picture a man 6-feet-5, 250 pounds, with forearms the size of Volkswagons.
We think of, say, Duane Kuiper. Homer Bush. Glenn Hubbard. Mickey
Morandini. Tito Fuentes.
We think, in other words, of normal-sized people. People who blend into the
crowd at the mall. People who can't cause their own solar eclipse just by
walking in front of the sun.
The Last 20-Game Loser of the 20th Century is getting mighty antsy these days. He still wears his crown. But he can feel it getting looser every time Omar Daal heads to the pitcher's mound. Daal has 18 losses for the Phillies and Diamondbacks this year. And the Phillies keep insisting he will not be leaving the rotation -- not to avoid 20 losses, certainly not to keep the legendary Brian Kingman from losing his one final claim to fame. It is 20 years now since Kingman lost 20 games for Billy Martin's 1980 Athletics. There have been other times over those 20 years when someone seemed destined to supplant him as baseball's last 20-game loser. But most of those other times, Kingman knew he could count on somebody -- usually somebody sitting in the manager's office -- wimping out and yanking his big threat out of the rotation, if not the big leagues. But not this time. Not so far. And Brian Kingman is not happy about this development. "This guy can't lose 20," Kingman told Week in Review. "Then you won't have any reason to call me anymore. I'll have to kidnap him or something." It takes a rare individual to find the good side in being a 20-game loser. But Kingman remains one of the greats. If not for this, who the heck would even know he was in the Baseball Encyclopedia? So never in history has anyone squirmed so nervously over the prospect of losing such a dubious distinction. "I've even got all my friends calling now with fake accents," Kingman said. "They're pretending they're Omar Daal, and they say, 'I'm not only gonna lose 20. I'm gonna lose 21, you piece of (fill in favorite noun). We're gonna show everybody it's not that hard.' "I get those all the time now," Kingman said. "In fact, I just got off one of those calls. I've probably had seven or eight of them." With friends like these, you can see why Kingman is squirming. It's bad enough that Daal is still scheduled to make all his starts. Daal's even still scheduled to pitch on the last day of the season. When news of that plan reached him this week, Kingman was outraged. "What?" he gulped. "Don't they have any rookies they need to look at?" Sorry. No such luck. When we first contacted Kingman about this situation a couple of weeks ago, he wasn't real concerned. Back then, it was just Daal and Jose Lima lagging with 15 losses. But then, "Daal started reeling them off," he said, with obvious agitation. "I mean, when's the last time he won, anyway?" The correct answer to that question would be: August 8. And even though Daal has actually pitched well lately (allowing just two runs in each of his last three starts), the Phillies' offense has banded together to advance his cause by scoring a total of one run in those three starts. If this keeps up, there's no telling how many Daal might lose. He could blow right past Brian Kingman and shoot for Anthony Young (proud loser of 27 in a row). But Kingman continues to think positively -- since he can't figure out what else he can do at this point. "I guess I should go back to my original statement: It's not that easy," he said. "Anybody can lose 18 or 19. It's losing 20 that's tough. And he hasn't done it yet. If he was trying to win 20, there'd be a lot of people who think there's no way he was going to make it. So how come because he has a chance to lose 20, people think it's a done deal? It's just like winning 20. A lot of stuff can happen to keep him from doing it." Unfortunately, most of that stuff would seem to involve the Phillies figuring out a way to win when Daal pitches. And since they're 1-8 when he goes out there heading into his start Saturday against Florida, it might not be a good idea to count on that. So Kingman is sounding more and more resigned to this sad twist of fate. He's begun to plan a trip to Philadelphia to witness Daal's 20th loss in person, should it happen. And he's even beginning to convince himself it might be his own fault. "You know, I've been to Maracaibo (Venezuela), which is where he's from," Kingman said. "I pitched there in winter ball. Maybe we met when he was 10, I shook his hand and I gave him the curse." Hoo boy. You know this guy's having a rough time when he's getting that conspiratorial. But he may have reached a new low point this week, when Daal's former manager, Felipe Alou, was quoted as saying that the Phillies were wrong to let Daal keep going out there -- because "this guy is too good a pitcher to be with Brian Kingman." Let's just say that wasn't Brian Kingman's favorite quote of the week. "Too good a pitcher to be with me?" he grumbled. "Hey, I won almost three times as many games my year as he has." Yeah, and Felipe Alou can look that up, too. Kingman went 8-20 his year. Daal is 3-18. Facts are facts. And clearly, Alou hasn't checked his. So now, not only does Kingman have Omar Daal to put some kind of last-minute hex on. He also needs to figure out a way to set Felipe Alou straight. "I've got to see if there are any Old-Timers Games coming up," said the Last 20-Game Loser of the 20th Century, under obvious duress. "Maybe I can come out and bean him." History-onics of the week And while we're on the subject of major American baseball history, we have a question: Where's Barbara Walters this year? Where are Regis and Good Morning America? Where's Rolling Stone and Time and Newsweek? Once again, for the second time in three years, we have one of baseball's most spectacular home-run records under assault. But unlike the Mark McGwire media crush (co-starring Sammy "I'm Not The Man" Sosa) that just about swallowed the Great Home Run Race of 1998 whole, this time it's a little too quiet out there. Going into his start Saturday, Houston's Jose Lima stands on the precipice of history. He's given up 44 home runs this year. And that means he's just two bombs away from Robin Roberts' all-time National League single-season home-run record (46, in 1956). He's also only six away -- and still right on pace -- in his pursuit of Bert Blyleven's all-time major-league record (50, set in 1986). Now any mathematician would tell you that for every home run hit, there has to be a home run allowed. So therefore, the record for giving up the most homers in a season ought to be just as difficult to break as the record for hitting the most homers in a season. Yet poor Jose Lima hasn't gotten his just share of national pandemonium. So here at Week in Review, we're out to correct this grievous injustice. Lima's national campaign starts right here, right now. We want some Big Mac-style hoopla, and we want it now. And here to provide some insight on how you can go about providing that is Astros broadcast-witticist Jim Deshaies. "Shouldn't the fans be steaming through the gates early to watch Jose throw on the side," Deshaies wondered, "the way they did to watch McGwire take BP? They were both in the pursuit of the record for home runs in one year." This is true. But we see one minor difficulty in that particular brand of national pandemonium: When Lima throws on the side, every ball travels 60 feet, 6 inches. Whereas when McGwire took batting practice, he was liable to hit a ball 860 feet, 6 inches. "Well," Deshaies conceded, "I suppose it would take a more analytical fan to sit back and watch Jose throw on the side and say, 'That ball would have been hit way out of here. And so would that one. And that one, too.'" OK, so the throw-on-the-side hoopla plan is out. But there are other ways to go about this -- the family angle, for instance. For one thing, it's time to make preparations, Deshaies suggested, "to start flying in Bert's family." But we can't be leaving Lima's family out of this act, either. One of the most heartwarming aspects of McGwire's home-run chase, for instance, was his warm relationship with his son, who was often on hand to serve as bat boy and designated hugger. "So shouldn't we have Lima's son run out of the dugout and give him a hug every time he serves up a long ball?" Deshaies proposed. Sounds good to us. Now we just need the entire Lima family to get with our program. Meanwhile, shouldn't Lima be a candidate for some big-time national TV exposure, too? When Big Mac was doing his thing, there were actual prime-time specials on him by mid-September. Poor Jose Lima can't even be sure his home runs will even be shown on Baseball Tonight. What's up with that? "I think we need to contact Peter Jennings," Deshaies said. "Or the Dan Rather Evening News, get a little profile. Or Barbara Walters. But she'd be asking, 'Did you give up a lot of home runs in your childhood?' She'd definitely try to make him cry -- tie this to some painful event from his youth. You know that." Well, we're sure some of these Lima home runs this season have made a few youths cry in the stands at Astros games. So it ought to be a short leap to the kind of weeping Barbara Walters has in mind. Now before we continue here, we want to point out that Jim Deshaies is no ordinary guy to be commenting on the pursuit of this home-run record -- because once, not so long ago, he appeared to be pursuing it himself. In 1994 with the Minnesota Twins, he gave up 30 home runs in his first 25 starts, covering 130 1/3 innings. So he was well on his way to chasing this hallowed mark himself -- until the strike so rudely interrupted him. Blyleven also happened to be broadcasting Twins games that year. So he was even at the point where he was starting to get asked about Deshaies making a run at him. "And I remember he kept saying, 'But I was having a good year,'" said Deshaies -- who wasn't. Blyleven did, in fact, win 17 games and pitch 291 innings the year he broke his record. Whereas Deshaies was 6-12, with a 7.39 ERA. So unlike Jose Lima, who hasn't missed a start, Deshaies was sure the Twins never would have allowed him to get close to the record. "I mean, it wasn't like they wanted me out there," he said. At the time, Deshaies described himself as "the poster boy for bad pitching." Now, given subsequent developments in the pitching industry, "I consider myself a pioneer," he said. But our point here is that he's eminently qualified to provide insight into a story like this. And now, as Lima's chase rolls onward, Deshaies can't help but wonder when ESPN will start breaking into prime-time programming every time there's a chance Lima might give up another home run. "It could get a little unwieldy, considering how many hitters he faces in a night," Deshaies said. "So we have to come up with a formula: Every time he faces a guy with, say, 20 homers, 'Let's go to Enron Field.'" Of course, since just about every utility infielder has 20 these days, that could get unwieldy, too. But at this point, we'd rather err on the side of overexposure, considering the current state of underexposure this quest has generated. It's never too soon to think ahead, we say. And Deshaies showed the kind of futuristic thinker he is by thinking way, way ahead -- to the magical moment in which Lima actually breaks this record. "If No. 51 flies out of the ballpark," Deshaies wondered, "how much would that ball be worth?" Hey, who knows? That's up to the law of supply and demand. And if the current state of affairs is any indication, Lima's supply is pretty much trouncing his demand at the moment. But once our campaign catches on with the public, the media giants and, most importantly, the Home Shopping Network, it's only a matter of time until all that changes. Hit man of the week He's the undefeated champion of the Major League Baseball Boxing Association's rarified coolerweight division. La-dies anddddddd gentlemennnnnnn, in this corner, your coolerweight champion of the worlddddddddddd, Iron Mike Hampton. Yes, sir. The Mets' crafty left-hander is a fighting force to be reckoned with, all right. Back on April 28, he scored a devastating three-punch knockout of an overmatched water cooler at Coors Field. And that led coolers everywhere to begin dodging him unashamedly. But last Friday, after four months in training, Hampton was back at it -- wiping out another helpless cooler in almost Tyson-esque fashion, right there on the big stage of New York's one and only Shea Stadium. So where, we wondered, does Iron Mike Hampton go from here? For the answer, we've turned to the official boxing consultant of Week in Review, fight legend Lou Duva. But we regret to report that Duva was unabashedly unimpressed by Hampton's 2-0 record against the cooler world. "The only thing I look for from a water cooler," Duva said, "is when one of my fighters messes up, I pick up the water cooler -- and I hit him over the head with it." Asked if the ability to pummel a cooler is any kind of sign of greatness in a fighter, Duva said he wouldn't know. "My fighters don't hit water coolers," he said. "It would mess up their nails, which they just got done. "Tyson, in his heyday, never hit a water cooler," Duva went on. "If he had, he would have put his fist right through it -- and probably knocked himself out of some $10-million fight." Not that Duva thinks Hampton's dominance of the coolerweight division should be completely overlooked, you understand. He just thinks baseball needs to change its accounting system. "How do they give his record?" Duva asked. "In the future, they should say, 'Four wins, three losses -- and he bested two water coolers.'" But the mere ability to beat those coolers wouldn't be enough to get him a match with one of Duva's stable of champs. Oh, no. "I do have a couple of amateur kids over here, if he'd like to go a couple rounds with them instead of the water cooler," Duva said. "He might do OK in that class. One guy, I think, works in a water-cooler truck." But we're guessing Hampton wants to stick to more inanimate opposition. So if that's the case, how should we define his place in the world of flying fists? "Punching out the cooler, maybe we can give him the Billy Martin Award," Duva said. "But if he wants to move up from here, the only other thing I could think of he could do is go up one level -- and knock out the showers. If he can do that, maybe we can move him up -- and give him the Bobby Knight Award." Wild pitches Box score line of the week Fresh off a bizarre start in which he walked in three runs with the bases loaded and got ripped by his own pitching coach, Cubs rookie Ruben Quevedo followed that act with another wild one last Saturday against the Astros. His award-winning line: 3 2/3 IP, 10 H, 9 R, 9 ER, 1 BB, 6 K, 4 HR, 82 pitches to get 11 outs. Ouch. With Quevedo's assistance, the Astros became the 14th team in history to have three different players hit two home runs in a game. One of them was Tim Bogar, whose two bombs (both off Quevedo) represented the first time in his eight-year career he'd hit two outside-the-park homers in the same game. Final score: Astros 14, Cubs 4. "When every fourth guy comes up and hits a home run," said Astros manager Larry Dierker, "it makes life easier." Comeback of the week OK, everyone who expected to see the long-lost Steve Ontiveros starting a big game for the Red Sox this Saturday, raise your hand. Thought so. Ontiveros, 39, hasn't pitched in the major leagues since Sept. 29, 1995 -- nine outings (and one win) after he'd become the losing pitcher in his first and only All Star Game. So it's only fitting that he launched his comeback at his own retirement party. His wife threw that one for him in March, after he proved he was really retired by not going to spring training. At the party, his old friend, Dave Leiper made the mistake of asking him: "Can you still throw?" Next thing he knew, Ontiveros was pitching for the Valley Vipers in the Western League, for his ex-teammate, Bob Welch. That led to a gig with the Rockies' Triple-A team in Colorado Springs. Which led to a tryout Sunday in Boston. Which led to his start this weekend. Only one down side to all this: His wife has announced she's through throwing him any more retirement parties. "Too much work," Ontiveros said. "She said next one, I have to do myself." Mascot of the week Wednesday in Pittsburgh, Pirates manager Gene Lamont gave Brian Giles the night off because the Cardinals were starting left-hander Rick Ankiel. Right before game time, Lamont was approached in the dugout by the Pirate Parrot, who wanted to know why Giles wasn't playing. Lamont explained it. But the Parrot told Lamont that was a lousy reason to sit a guy making $9 million a year. They then went back and forth until Lamont finally told the Parrot to take a hike. Whereupon the Parrot whipped off the head of his costume -- to reveal that the guy inside happened to be named Brian Giles. Can't even tell the Parrots without a program in Pittsburgh these days. Second sacker of the week As we discussed earlier in Week in Review, this Mark McGwire second-base experiment has its detractors. And one Cardinal who isn't too sure what to think of it is third-base coach Jose Oquendo. Oquendo, you'll recall, was a Cardinals second baseman himself for three years, from 1989 to '91. And the most homers he ever hit in any of those seasons was, well, one. It took McGwire exactly four days of his personal second-base career to tie Oquendo. "He won't hit any more the rest of the year," Oquendo assured the St. Lous Post-Dispatch's Rick Hummel. "He probably will -- but maybe I'll stop him at third." Rack basher of the week As long as we're doing sidebars on our previous Week in Review items, Tigers outfielder Bobby Higginson proved Tuesday that attacking bat racks is way more effective than assaulting water coolers. After making an out in the second inning Tuesday in Chicago, Higginson returned to the dugout and got some serious hacks in on an obviously defective bat rack. Then, in his next at-bat, he hit a home run. Which proved, said manager Phil Garner (who had held a team meeting the day before for the express purpose of "venting my frustrations"), that "venting is excellent." "It's those water coolers that cause losses a lot of times," Garner told Booth Newspapers' Danny Knobler, "and nobody ever knows. Bat racks, they don't harbor your bats properly, they cause you to miss pitches that you should hit. So you've got to take them to task every now and then. I don't reckon that bat rack will do that again. Not in this series." Nudist of the week You see some amazing spectacles at Wrigley Field. But few will ever top last Friday's striptease act on the pitcher's mound by one highly demonstrative Cubs fan. As Houston pitcher Jose Cabrera attempted to warm up for the seventh inning, the fan headed for the mound, ripped off his shirt and shorts, then made a gesture that will go undescribed on this web site. Whereupon he was carted off -- quite gingerly, we might add -- by security, which led him right through the stands, still undressed, as his clothes lay on the mound. Finally, another security guard was sent to retrieve the clothes -- and treated them, reported Astros broadcast-witticist Jim Deshaies, "like they were carrying the Bubonic Plague." Cabrera then returned to the mound -- and almost immediately gave up a home run to Sammy Sosa. "If I'm Jose Cabrera there," Deshaies said, "I'd have said after that guy went out there: 'Hey, I'm done.' That's a no-win situation. If you pitch well, you're saying, 'Something like that is commonplace for me.' So pitching poorly is the only thing you can do there. But that's not a real good thing, either." Amazingly, this was the second nude fan the Cubs have encountered this season. They also had a naked guy slide into second base against them in Kansas City. "Everybody," said Cubs quote machine Mark Grace, "wants to moon the Cubs." Brew Crew of the week Last Sunday, the Cardinals played their final game ever at County Stadium. So before the game, four St. Louis pitchers decided they couldn't sleep if they didn't find out, before it was too late, what Bernie the Brewer feels like when he slides into that big beer mug in center field. It meant climbing a ladder and scaffolding up to Bernie's chalet. Andy Benes, Darryl Kile, Rick Ankiel and Pat Hentgen made that climb, then took that fabled slide into the mug. Well, normally, when Bernie makes those slides, it means the Brewers have just won. And they did Sunday, too. It just took 10 innings. And Benes was the losing pitcher, in relief. "The slide was great," Benes said. "That was the only good thing that happened today." Double take of the week A funny thing happened to Rod Beck in Tuesday's Red Sox-Indians game. He was told he was coming in to pitch the seventh inning. So the bullpen gates opened and out he trotted -- only to discover the previous pitcher, Hector Carrasco, was still on the mound, warming up. "I looked in the dugout, and everyone was waving me back," Beck said. "So I went back to the bullpen and threw a towel around my neck." But then, after Carrasco finished his warmups, out of the dugout popped manager Jimy Williams. Who went to the mound and did wave for Beck. "I didn't wave him back," Williams alibied. "I'd already told the umpires Beck was in the game. But then I looked and saw Carrasco on the mound. And I said, 'I've got to find out what's going on before I do something (stupid)." So Williams went back to the dugout, conferred with his coaches, ascertained that it was Carrasco who misunderstood his instructions to call it a night, and then brought in Beck for real. "That was a little embarrassing, running out there like that and then having to go back," Beck said. "Makes it look like I didn't know what the hell I was doing. Of course, I didn't." Mr. Trivia of the week Somebody had to become Randy Johnson's 3,000th career strikeout victim last Sunday in Florida. Winner (or loser) of that lottery turned out to be Marlins third baseman Mike Lowell. "I'm delighted that I'll be an answer to a trivia question," Lowell deadpanned, "at least until he gets 4,000." "He's a pleasure," said Lowell, without any trace of sincere glee, "to hit against." Debut of the week Ten years after the Reds made him their No. 1 draft pick out of Cincinnati's famed Moeller High School, Adam Hyzdu finally got his first big-league hit last weekend -- against the Reds. He was a Pirate at the time, but he was working on his fifth organization. "All I could think about," Hyzdu told the Cincinnati Enquirer's Chris Haft, "was: 4,191 more and I'll be tied with Pete." Upcoming debut of the week Then there's C.C. Sabathia, a man who figures to be making his first major-league start in Fenway Park next week. And boy, was that against all odds. The Indians were worried about pushing him too fast, so they allowed him to pitch for the Olympic team. But then the Olympians decided he wouldn't be a member of their three-man rotation in Sydney. And since there was a stipulation in Sabathia's arrangement that he wouldn't pitch in relief, they sent him home to California this week. But the Indians are still looking for live arms to pitch in their back-to-back doubleheaders in Boston next week. So they have all but annointed Sabathia as one of those live arms, once he finishes pitching a simulated game in Florida this weekend. So the Cleveland Plain Dealer's Paul Hoynes asked manager Charlie Manuel why the organization had U-turned on Sabathia -- after allowing him to literally fly around the world (and then around America) first. "I guess," Manuel said, "we want to see how quick he can bounce back from jet lag." Husband of the week Toronto's Dave Martinez may have become the eighth player in the last century to play for four teams in one season. But he's still married to his only wife of the year. And he told Bloomberg News' Jerry Crasnick he recognizes that moving four times in four months doesn't qualify as his wife's favorite way to spend a summer. "My wife's birthday is coming up," Martinez said. "If I don't give her a nice vacation or a ring or some diamonds or something, it's going to be a lonnnnggg winter." Trivia answer Orioles (17 straight, 1969-85), Red Sox (14 straight, 1969-82), Blue Jays (11 straight, 1983-93), Reds (10 straight, 1972-81) and Dodgers (10 straight, 1969-78). Jayson Stark is a senior writer at ESPN.com. Week in Review appears each Friday. | ALSO SEE Jayson Stark archive | |||||
