Armadillo: Sunday's six-pack
Six of the my favorite baseball announce teams to listen to on the baseball package
-- Brian Anderson/Bill Schroeder, Brewers
-- Victor Rojas/Mark Gubicza, Angels
-- Don Orsillo/Mark Grant, Padres
-- Dick Bremer/Bert Blyleven, Twins
-- Drew Goodman/Jeff Huson or Ryan Spliborghs, Rockies
-- Jason Bennetti/Steve Stone, White Sox
Other analysts I think are very good: Ron Darling (Mets), Bob Brenly (Arizona) and Ray Fosse (A's). Not that fond of their play-by-play partners, though.
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Armadillo: Sunday's List of 13: Wrapping up a sports Saturday.......
13) Milwaukee Brewer TV announcers were telling a story about last July 31, when the Mets/Brewers almost made a trade at the deadline. Milwaukee brass told Carlos Gomez he had been traded to the Mets, he was shaking hands with teammates, saying his goodbyes but then the trade fell through.
12) Mets wound up trading for Yoenis Cespedes instead, which worked out really well for them, as they got to the World Series. Gomez wound up getting dealt to the Astros, where he has struggled greatly.
11) As far as baseball eliminating the four pitches for the intentional walk, last year in the major leagues there were 951 intentional walks in 2,430 games, so eliminating those four pitches isn't going to be a huge time-saver.
10) Ichiro Suzuki had his 253rd game with 3+ hits last night, most amongst active players. Ichiro now has 2,954 hits in his 16 big league seasons.
9) I've got no idea why, but people in Chicago do not like ketchup on hot dogs. White Sox announcers were discussing this the other night and back in 2003, a friend of mine actually got mad at me for asking for ketchup at a Chicago hot dog stand.
I dislike mustard and relish but if I knew the ketchup was going to cause a problem, I would've eaten the weiner plain.
8) A batter who hits a sacrifice fly isn't charged with an at-bat, but a batter who knocks in a run with a ground out is-- why is this? Whats the difference?
7) Marlins 3, Nationals 2-- Washington had bases loaded, no one out in ninth inning but couldn't tie game. Miami is now 3.5 games behind Washington in NL East.
6) Jim Baron is retiring as basketball coach at Canisius at age 62; he has been a very good coach at a number of places: Canisius, St Bonaventure, URI, St Francis, PA.
Few years ago, I was sitting in front of coach Baron at an AAU tournament here in Albany- his son was playing. It was a close game against a local team, and at the end of the game, the hometown refs gave the local team a couple calls and they won.
Coach Baron had been pretty low-key during the game but when his son's team got hosed at the end and lost, he was steamed and he went after the offending ref to give him a piece of his mind. He did quickly and fairly quietly but believe me, the guy who made the calls deserved to get ripped.
Anyway, good luck in retirement coach. Canisius will miss you. .
5) 164 undergraduates declared for this year's NBA Draft; many have returned to college, but there are only 60 picks in the draft, so add in seniors and kids from other countries and a lot of kids are going to wind up very disappointed.
4) Toronto's Bismack Biyombo is going to make a fortune as a free agent this summer and when he does, remember this: last night in Game 3 against Cleveland, Biyombo had 15 rebounds before he took his first shot of the game. Guys like that are worth their weight in gold, if you want to have a winning team.
3) Jack McDowell threw 10+ complete games three years in a row, the last pitcher to do that and that was back in 1991-93. Will probably never happen again.
2) Major league baseball wants more balls in play; approximately 30% of plate appearances are ending in walks/strikeouts. Baseball's head honchos want more action, so they're going to raise the strike zone some, hoping it'll result in more balls put in play, which makes the game more interesting. We'll see how that goes.
1) RIP Alan Young 96, the actor who played Wilbur Post on the classic TV show Mr Ed, passed away this week. It is not easy to be a straight man for a talking horse; that was one of my favorite TV shows as a kid. Yes, I said a talking horse, but he only talked to Wilbur, which caused problems with Wilbur's wife Carol.
Just loved Mr Ed, whether he was driving a delivery truck or taking batting practice against Sandy Koufax (yes, Koufax tossed a meatball to a horse, with manager Leo Durocher watching). Spent many hours laughing with this show. RIP, sir.
