By Hal McCoy
UNSOLICITED OBSERVATIONS from The Man Cave, pulling for the Cleveland Guardians in the post-season and at least one Ohio MLB team is relevant. .
—IT’S THE ‘PITTS’: The Pittsburgh Pirates are known to be so cheap they should change their name to the Pittsburgh Pikers.
But what they did this week is as cheap and heartless as it gets. Rowdy Tellez needed four at bats to have a $200,000 bonus kick in.
They cut him so they could keep the 200 grand.
The front office probably spends that much money on cocktail parties.
And free agents are going to look at what the Pirates did to Tellez and think, “They could do that to me. I’m not signing there.”
Wouldn’t it be nice if MLB fined the Pirates $300,000 for unethical practices.
—QUOTE: From Kurt Vonnegut: “We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap.” (For sure, Pirates owner Robert Nutting is not going to save his team. Fans are calling him Robert Nuthin.’)
—IS THAT NORM-AL: Somebody posted on Facebook that Barry Larkin is the front-runner as the next manager of the Cincinnati Reds.
And somebody posted a response that is a shocker. It read: “Why would he even consider taking that job.”
Who posted it? None other than Norm Charlton, one-third of the Reds’ famous bullpen trio, The Nasty Boys.
—SOX IT TO ME: The Chicago White Sox have lost 120 games, tying the 1962 New York Mets for the most one-season losses in modern MLB history.
And with three games remaining, they are a dead, solid lock to break the dubious futility record.
The Mets had an excuse. They were a first-year expansion team with a roster filled with over-the-hill castoffs from the other teams that dump those players on the Mets.
The White Sox, a long, long established franchise, have no excuse. It is just an inept front office that doesn’t have a clue.
—QUOTE: From New York Mets manager Casey Stengel during his team’s 120-loss season: “Please don’t let anybody cut my throat. I may want to do that myself.”
—THE ‘INSIDE’ SCOOP: San Francisco’s Matt Chapman hit a rare inside the park home run last week, so I went searchin.’
Henry Aaron hit 755 home runs and only one was inside the park and it came off Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Bunning.
The most career inside-the-parkers. A guy named Jesse Burkett, playing mostly for Cleveland, had 55. What’s strange about that is he only hit 75 total home runs during his 16-year career from 1890 to 1905.
Ty Cobb hit 117 career homers and 46 were inside the park.
Cincinnati Reds outfielder Champ Summer once ran out an inside-the-park homer and after sliding into home plate he lay prone. Trainer Larry Starr ran out to check on him and Summers said “I’ll be all right. I just swallowed my chewing tobacco.”
—ASTOUNDING NUMBERS: Speaking of Henry Aaron, if you subtract his 755 homers, he still had more than 3,000 hits. He had 14 seasons of hitting above .300. And he was an extra-base machine. He had 12 more miles worth of total bases than any other player, more than Willie, Mickey & Duke.
And Babe Ruth? Of his 714 home runs, he homered against nine different Hall of Fame pitchers. He hit nine off Walter Johnson.
Detroit was his favorite victim with 123 home runs. And the first inning was his favorite inning to hit a homer, also 123 times.
—POOR PRODUCTION: It is easy to give Jake Fraley a pass for this season because of a personal distraction involving the health of his daughter. Family is far more important than baseball.
While his .276 batting average is highest on the Reds and he has 20 stolen bases, Fraley has driven in only 26 runs in 368 plate appearances.
—QUOTE: From former pitcher Tommy John who had the first surgery that was named after him: “I don’t watch baseball. It’s not the game I played.”
The only pitcher with more wins than John who is not in the Hall of Fame is Roger Clemens. And we know why he isn’t in.
And, no, Tommy John underwear is not named after Tommy John the pitcher.
—A FINE FAREWELL: The Philadelphia/Kansas City/Oakland/Sacramento/Las Vegas A’s played their last game in the Oakland Mausoleum Thursday afternoon in front of a rauous full-house crowd of 46,889.
They saw the A’s play a flawless game, a 3-2 win over the Texas Rangers with closer Mason Miller pitching a 1-2-3 ninth, striking out two hitters with 103 miles an hour and 102 miles an hour fastballs.
The A’s are finished in the Mausoleum and will play a coupe of years in Sacramento while a stadium is being constructed for them in Las Vegas.
All year, you could count the crowd with your fingers, but 46,889 showed up Thursday. Where were they all year?
And isn’t it strange that Oakland lost its NFL Raiders to Las Vegas and now the city is losing its MLB franchise to Sin City?
I was fortunate to cover the last two games of the 1990 World Series in Oakland, when the Cincinnati Reds finished off the A’s in a four-game sweep.
And now they’re sweeping the A’s right out of Oakland.
—IT COULD HAPPEN: How fast is Elly De La Cruz? A friend suggesed that at some point next season De La Cruz will hit a line drive through the pitcher’s box and the ball will hit him in the back when he slides into second base.
—A FAIR WARNING: The worst thing that could happen to the WNBA happened. The Indiana Fever and its star attraction, Caitlin Clark, were eliminated from the playoffs.
TV ratings for the rest of the playoffs figure to plummet lower than the ill-fated TV show, ‘My Mother, The Car.”
In her rookie season, Clark averaged 19.2 points a game, a league-leading 8.4 assists and 5.7 rebounds and drew droves of fans to their TV sets..
And she issued fair warning to the WNBA by saying, “The fun part is that I feel like I am just scratching the surface. I know I want to help this franchise get better and I feel I can get a lot better.”
How can you get better than All-World?
—PLAYLISlT NUMBER 97: All these songs are for my beautiful wife, Nadine — the love of my life, my number one supporter, the one person is this vast world I cannot be without:
Love Of My Life (Brian May), Forever And Ever, Amen (Randy Travis), Amazed (Lonestar), Can’t Help Falling In Love (Elvis Presley), Just The Way You Are (Bruno Mars), All I Want Is You (U2), Heard It In A Love Song (Marshall Tucker Band).
Lost In Love (Air Supply), Keep On Lovin’ You (REO Speedwagon), Faithfully (Journey), Every Time You Go Away (Paul Young & George Michael), Wonderful Tonight (Eric Clapton), Just What I Needed (The Cars), She Drives Me Crazy (Fine Young Cannibals),