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Post by pippsheadache on Mar 31, 2019 11:06:39 GMT -5
Was moving yesterday so missed most of the game. Looks like it was a bit of a letdown. I still expect Holder to be pretty strong this year even though from what Ive read he struggled a bit. Still a good 6th option out of the bullpen (when Betances is healthy). Fun fact though (which I may have mentioned here before), Jimmy Yacabonis who was first in relief yesterday for Baltimore graduated from my high school (same year as my brother actually). He made his MLB debut in 2017 vs the Yankees and got taken deep by Judge. Looks like yesterday he caught Judge looking. Yacabonis showed some good stuff. But next time it's Judge's turn to take him deep again. |
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Post by inger on Mar 31, 2019 11:43:21 GMT -5
Warren Spahn’s baseball card looked like an old, bald-headed fart that would shout at you for losing your baseball on his lawn without his teeth in. Of course he WAS something like forty one or forty two years old, I believe...How awful is it when an athlete refuses to believe his time in sports is over. There are some sad stories out there of final seasons. Sometimes several final seasons that turned out bad.. Warren Spahn actually won 23 games when he was 42 years old, his thirteenth and final 20-win season. He did hang around for a few more seasons after that, but I don't remember him seeming like a tragic figure. He never seemed to take himself too seriously. I remember regarding him more like an old golfer who couldn't hit it 300 yards anymore, but who every now and then surprises you with a nice iron shot. I had a Clemensesque "misrememberance" of Spahn. It wasn't until '65 when he joined the Mets. Oddly after that amazing 23-7 season at age 42, Spahn struggled to records of 6-13 and 7-16 to close out his career. I would say 13-29 for me was kind of a sad thing to see (or at least read about). He was probably the first great pitcher that I ever saw hang on beyond his usefullness...Whitey Ford of course had one more flash of strong pitching before he had to turn the lights out...Had he retired at the end of 1963, his record would have been 343- and exactly 200 losses... An acquaintance of mine has the last name Spahn, and his mother told him that he's some 37th cousin on his father's side. Ron is big guy who can really make a pain of himself, plus is one of those guys that spits when he talks. He approached Warren and told him the story of them being "Cousins...They're two of a kind"...probably bathing him in saliva in the process and said Spahn had no reaction whatsoever. Poor Ron, felt as though he had been summarily dismissed. It's a shame when people make a pain of themselves and don't quite understand why people can't wait to get rid of them...His personality is a big like John Candy's character in "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles". After a while he sort of guilts you into liking him...But he still drives you crazy with his idiosyncrasies... I'm glad to hear that Warren is a nice guy...I sort of suspected as such. Ron thinks he's what he calls a "Piece of sh*t" because he got semi-ignored. Maybe if he would have just got the book signed and moved on...Come to think of it, knowing Ron...oh well...I'll drop it... |
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Post by pippsheadache on Mar 31, 2019 12:58:27 GMT -5
Sure, not many players go out on top. Koufax did because medically he had to. Ted Williams did because he wasn't human. Even though people often say Joe DiMaggio went out on top, he was in clear decline his last year, although he certainly was not embarrassing himself. Both Ford and Mantle, even though they were spent forces by the end, did not really perform poorly relative to the rest of the league when they quit. Both had major physical issues which made it impossible to continue.
Whitey put up ERA+ of 135 and 192 in his final two truncated seasons. And Mick, hobbling at the end in an era of pitcher dominance, still put up OPS+ numbers of 149 and 143 his last two years. That stat didn't exist at the time, and people looked at the low BA compared to what he had done before and assumed he was sadly hanging on.
Spahn went from great to bad so quickly that he probably didn't have time to think he had lost it. I can't blame him for giving it a couple of more tries before hanging up the glove. And at the very very end with the Giants he pitched pretty well.
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