Sunday Observations

By Hal McCoy

UNSOLICITED OBSERVATIONS from The Man Cave and as always, I happened to tune in Saturday’s St. Louis-Chicago Cubs game and saw something I’d never seen before. . .well, something nobody had ever seen before. Read on.

—JOSHUA WAS FIT: It was Joan Baez who sang, ‘The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.”

It was Joshua Baez who drove old Wrigley Field down. Baez came, he saw and he knocked down the old Wrigley Field walls.

The St. Louis Cardinals called him up from the minors Friday to make his major league debut Saturday after he hit 34 homers for the Triple-A Memphis Redbirds.

What took them so long?

There has never been a debut like it in the history of Major League Basball. Baez hit the first major league pitch he saw for a home. Then he homered on his second at bat. They he homered on his third at bat.

Nobody had ever done that. After his first home run, Cardinals broadcaster Chip Caray said, “It’s not the easy, kid.”

Oh yeah? After Baez’s third homer, Caray a former Cubs broadcaster, a former Braves broadcaster and now a Cardinals broadcaster, sputtered, “For the first time in my professional career, I’m speechless.”

All three homers came off Cubs lefthander Matthew Boyd on three different type pitches, one to center, one to left and one to right.

°°The first one, a 94 miles an hour fastball, was blasted 449 feet to dead center.

°°The second one, a 78 miles an hour change-up on a full count after Boyd had him 0-and-2, covered 382 feet into the left field stands.

°°The third one, an 83 miles an hour slider on a 1-and-0 count, was jolted 368 feet into the right field bleachers.

The full house in Wrigley, normally a madhouse against opposing players, gave Baez a standing ovation.

“It is unreal and I can’t really put it into words,” he said after driving in five runs during an 8-4 Cardinals win over the Cubs. “It’s a dream come true. To be honest, before the game I just tried to stay calm.

“I was trying to embrace it and the whole thing was just to have fun,” he added after the most fun any rookie ever had in his debut.

At this time last year, the 23-year-old Baez, the team’s No. 2 draft pick in 2021, was playing for Peoria in the High-A Midwest League.

And if the Cardinals run out of pitchers, Baez can pull a Shohei Ohtani. He pitched in high school and his fastball was clocked at 99 miles an hour.

—SAY WHAT?: A few games back, Cincinnati Reds CEO Bob Castellini interrupted manager Tito Francona’s post-game media scrum and said something.

He was on camera briefly and viewers couldn’t hear what he said while pointing at Francona.

What he said was, “There is a winner and a leader. And we’ve got a team that has leaders and winners.”

Who are those leaders? Winners? The winners would be Chase Burns, Sal Stewart, Tyler Stephenson and Elly De La Cruz. That’s four winners, not even enough to field a good basketball team.

Francona was asked if that was a vote of confidene and he said, “Well, I’m still here.”

What Castellini should have done is grab the microphone, step in frontr of the camera, and apologize to Francona and to the fans for what he and the front office haven’t done to make the team legitimate contenders. Instead they are happy to chase the third and final wild card spot.

That’s almost like a Little League participation trophy.

Remember, it was a naive Castellini who said at his introductory press conference when he took over the team in 2006, “We’re going to bring championships back to Cincinnati.”

And when he fired general manager Wayne Krivsky in 2008, he glared at me when I asked a question and said, “We’re just not going to lose any more.”

Well, Bob, we’re still waiting impatiently.

—NO WHIFFS: It is fairly rampant among most teams, they strike out more than they get hits. For example, the Reds strike out an average of 9.5 times a game and average 7.5 hits a game.

So that’s what makes Thursday’s Detroit-Cleveland game an outlier. Three Tigers pitchers combined on a 3-0 shutout and none struck out a single Guardian.

That’s right. Keider Montero, Tyler Holton and Kenley Jansen threw nine zeros at the Guardians and didn’t strike out anybody.

In this day and age of swings-and-misses, is a shutout with no strikeouts rare? Well, it has happened seven times since 2000.

On Friday night, Miami pitcher Sandy Alcantara held the Reds to one run on three hits with no strikeouts through six innings. Then during his last inning, the seventh, he struck out Noelvi Marte and Matt McLain.

And to the person who invented zero, thanks for nothing.

—SAY WHO?: Roger Maris and his young daughter, Susan, were sharing some New York-style pizza and Susan looked up between bites and said:

“Daddy, I know who is the best baseball player in the world?”

ROGER: “Who?”

SUSAN: “Mickey Mantle.”

ROGER: “Who told you that?”

SUSAN: “Mickey Mantle.”

—QUOTE MACHINE: Baseball people say the darndest things:

—FROM catcher/broadcaster/comedian Bob Uecker: “When I was a kid, I was the youngest kid in Milwaukee to throw a 16-pound hammer and then I was the youngest kid in Milwaukee to wear a truss.”

—FROM Bob Uecker, again, when asked about the great tan on his face, “Yeah, I got it by drinking a few beers and standing on my head.”

—FROM Bob Uecker, once again, “One of my highlights was taking a bases-loaded walk to force in the winning run. It won the spring’s first intrasquad game.”

—DEEP THINKER: Long-time friend Tyler ‘Ratboy’ Wessell messaged me recently to say, “When I die, I want the Cincinnati Reds to be my pallbearers so they can let me down one last time.”

—PLAYLIST NUMBER 199: As composer/pianist Duke Ellington put it, “The wise musicians are those who play what they can master.”

—You Might Think (The Cars), Do You Know What I Mean (Lee Michaels), Moma Told Me (Three Dog Night), Keep On Dancin’ (Gentrys), People Are Strange (The Doors), Dirty Water (Standells), Oh Girl (Chi-Lites), Still Crazy After All These Years (Paul Simon).

—Old Man (Neil Young), By The Time I Get To Phoenix (Glen Campbell), I’m Still Standing (Elton John), Your Smiling Face (James Taylor), Soolaimon (Neil Diamond), Different Drum (Stone Poneys), One Of These Nights (Eagles), Sweet Child Of Mine (Guns ’N Roses).
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