Pride

Kind of a nice follow-up to the ego post, but I'd like to take this into a different direction. Every three years there is the World Baseball Classic. It's terrible because it forces guys to hurry their workouts to get back into game ready shape, but it's a great tournament, where the best players represent their country.

For some reason, I feel like foreign players care much more about their own country than the U.S. players do. I mean, don't get me wrong - the players on the U.S. roster are playing hard and to win, but it's the players opting not to play that grind my gears.

I don't think you'll ever see Daisuke Matsuzaka or Ichiro declining a roster spot. But, in the past two tournaments, you had plenty of American aces decline spots. I can't blame them, but I think the U.S. is being misrepresented. I don't want to get into names and stats, but wouldn't it be nice if you had Lincecum, Greinke and Halladay all ready to go. I know these pitchers weren't the same back then, but even then, you had players decline spots. Back when Josh Hamilton was hitting bombs left and right, he declined.

I can't think of many hitters that don't play for U.S., but I'm sure there are. Other countries get 99% of their best players, I think U.S. gets about 80-85. And when you are talking about the best players to walk on this Earth, it's a big deal.

I understand why they don't want to play, and it makes sense. Forget about hurting your ML team in terms of performance, but you are risking injury. You hurry your workouts and now your pitch count and innings count for the year goes up. Being that baseball is a 6 month season, there is no good time to have it. Maybe I'm too patriotic, but I want to see America rip it up in '12. Maybe by then Bryce Harper will bat third and Stephen Strasburg will be on the hill.

Ego

They come in all different sizes. Obviously everyone has some sort of ego, and nobody likes the guy with the huge ego, but most would agree that you have to know you're good in order to have the proper confidence to succeed.

What got me thinking about this was what was happening lately with some old time pitchers maybe hanging on a bit too long. Take the great John Smoltz. The guy has been a beast, racking up great numbers year after year. 19 years in the bigs, only having his ERA above 4 just once since his rookie year, he begins his 20th season with the Red Sox, after 19 straight with the Braves.

He has a terrible stint with the Red Sox, going 2-5, with a 6.53 ERA. He was getting shelled left and right. Nothing really worked for him. He was then moved to the pen. That must have been a terrible feeling. I mean, this guy, one of the best pitchers since the 90s, is suddenly booted from the rotation. His ego is taking a huge hit.

Another example is playing on a team that is already out of the playoff race. Day in, day out, you put in "meaningless" at bats. Sometimes you might play a role in the playoffs, by perhaps beating a contender or even losing to a contender giving them enough wins to get their playoff spot. Sometimes. Mostly, you play before empty stands and get railed on for poor performance.

Well, all it took was for me to put myself in those situations to see how things like that work out. (Before I finish this, I just want to say that each scenario has something else to do with ego - I'm not comparing them.)

With Smoltz, he's not an idiot. He knows what's going on. Yea, it sucks, but when you play on a playoff contending team, like the Red Sox, you have to perform. He was given chances to turn things around but it didn't work. He has to put his ego in his pocket for now, and say, "What would I do if I was in the manager's position?" Once you open up your mind to how you look from the outside, things might start to make sense. And by the way, Smoltz is a class act, he couldn't have handled it better. He, of course, was traded to St. Louis, where he is 1-1 in 4 starts with a 3.27 ERA.

In terms of playing on a losing team, well, most of you know, I need not put myself in someone else's shoes. Ha. Seriously. This is where your ego takes over. I don't see what's wrong with playing for yourself. Playing for yourself as best as you can, will bring the team to win games, instead of playing lazily and wasting ABs. Also, ML players are playing for millions, so I don't care what your situation is, just play. And maybe hope to get traded.

To sum in up, ego can come into the equation several ways. There are surely more. But this gives a little look into some situations that the ego (or lack thereof) can help.

The Big 3-0

OK, I'm not going to talk about the 3-0 count, although there is plenty to talk about there. That's for another time. The big 3-0 refers to the 30th post. Here it comes.

There was a play in tonight's Yankee game that I would like to discuss. As usual, I encourage comments, please feel free to share your opinion.

Ball game tied at 3, bottom 8, 1st and 2nd, 1 out, 1-1 count on the lefty hitter, and the Yanks attempt a double steal. Catcher fires a seed down to third, ball gets away, into LF, runners move up, which now gives the Yanks the lead with a runner on third and one out. View it here.

The question I was asked was: Who is to blame?

It's very very tough to blame someone. I'll start with the catcher's perspective. You make a throw like that, an absolute seed that beat the runner. It didn't just beat him before the bag, the throw beat him to the spot. In other words, you could throw at his feet and it gets there before his hands hit the bag, but Napoli's throw beat Gardner's hands. That's a seed and a very good throw. Great release too. Quick feet, quick arm. Now, for Figgins, the third baseman. He wasn't grounded. If he's grounded, waiting for throw in an athletic position, he makes that play easily. But he's still moving in the direction of third base dugout, and now throw is taking him to second. Even though it was maybe two and a half feet off of third, he couldn't get that extra reach. Tough play, because ML plays develop so quickly. However, I think the bottom line is this -

If that throw doesn't get the runner, something is wrong on the receiving end.

Umpires

OK, without a season going on, it's very hard to find something to write about. I barely watch any Major League games, being as I have class late at night and that's also when I usually work. (For those who don't know I am a rec supervisor at school, and I am also on the Event Staff.)

Being a Yankee fan, I obviously saw the Arod/Girardi ejection. Arod got rung up on a ball that was, honestly, borderline. I think Arod was angry because catcher and umpire were talking and it made it look like ump gave borderline call to catcher because he was in the middle of a friendly chat. But if that would happen in a normal situation, he would just be dissapointed but wouldn't yell at umpire after being rung up. Could have gone either way, he just got the short end of the stick. Given the circumstances, Arod took it personally.

I personally prefer that umpires only say something when a call needs to be made. Only because if they start small talking, I have to also. I'd much rather focus on my pitcher and defense. It gets distracting sometimes. Your thinking about a lot of stuff, and the umpire mutters something. I really don't care what you think about that last play, I have to prepare for the next one.

I always wondered if catchers and hitters talk to umpires in the Major Leagues, because it happens a lot in amateur games. I've never seen it on TV, but I guess it happens here and there. Truth is, professional umpires should be just that. Professional.

Offseason

It is here. No summer ball, no fall ball (not until October) and now it's just weeks straight of working out, throwing, BP, all on own time. We have captains' practice once a week (no coaches) but even that is indoors so it's pretty annoying.

Basically, the only baseball done these days is coming straight from motivation to get better. Honestly, I don't see how people can let the oppurtunity go, to take BP everyday and get stronger. OK, I get why some people don't like the weight room, but hitting is the most fun part of baseball.

I was listening the other day to an interview with Carlos Pena of the Rays and it was about the mental side of baseball. When the conversation moved to the AL championship team, he was asked what he said to the team before the games against the Red Sox. Basically, he said how it was everything they wanted. All the work they put in, day in, day out, this is why you do it, and now they were there. The grind of putting in the work everyday is finally paying off, and now they have to play like they always have.

So that's the stage I'm at now. I'm going through drills and hitting routines daily, and I absolutely cannot wait until I see when it pays off.

The Big Picture

So we lost, 8-5 in the championship. Pretty disappointing loss, and as usual, you always feel like you should have won. Absolutely. Even though we went down like by 6 runs, I was so sure we would put up a big fight and take the game. Just by the way we played all year, I felt like it was almost a fluke that we lost, but it happens.

And now we can go back and think about the big picture. I mean, we played 10 games, across like 3 months so games were few and far between. The 11th was the championship game, because we got a free ride in the playoffs - teams had to drop out, long story. Anyway, it's so few, and it's really a shame we lost but also - do or die! There is no series! Anything can happen, and something did. Our starting pitcher wasn't himself and that's it, no redemption opportunity. And that's really what hurts. We can't go back out and get another chance.

So my focus now is to just focus on all the positives of the season. We put up some huge numbers and really beat up on some teams, but obviously, couldn't do it every time. You can't beat up on yourself after a loss, and it's not like we played badly for a stretch in the playoffs where you can be angry. We lost one game, and we chipped away but too late in the game. At the end of the day, it was a great season.

Now I'm just looking forward to college baseball starting up again. We don't have tryouts until October, but we have weekly captains' practice and I take BP everyday and get my throwing in. Still though, I can't wait to get back on to the field again. It's the time of year where you just put in hours upon hours of work, motivated from last year and for the upcoming year, and hope that the daily focus and preparation will pay off.