Kuzul

FORT WORTH, TEJAS by Dr. Diz

Baseball’s halfway around the track.  Figured it’s time to look at some of the whoopsie-daisy moments that have occurred so far…

The James Michael Curley (vote often and early) award goes to the fans of the Saint Louis Cardinals , who managed to stuff enough ballots to get Yadier Molina selected as the starting catcher in the All-Star game.  Molina’s batting .222 and has a whopping 3 HRs.  Miguel Olivio of Colorado deserved the start (.317, 11 HR, 41 RBI’s) but, hey, mistakes are made.

Just another Redbird All-Star backstop…

The Bird in the Hand is Worth Two in Bankruptcy Court award goes to GM Wayne Cashman and the Yankees who thought they could hornswaggle Cliff Lee from the Seattle Mariners…only to have the bankrupt Texas Rangers steal him out from under him. 

Cashman, whose deal to the Mariners centered around a defensively challenged catcher who is batting .254 in triple A, said “you just don’t do business that way.”

Gee, I guess if Seattle is not careful , the Yankees will stop offering their over-hyped prospects to them. 

The beauty of the whole episode is that one of the primary things that drove the Rangers into dire financial straits was a contract for a certain roid-boy that they are still paying on, who is currently wearing pinstripes.  Whoops.

The stars at night, are big an’ bright….

The Jimmy Piersall award goes to that same crack management team up in Seattle , who must have been sampling some BC kind bud when they offered professional nut job Milton Bradley a fat contract. 

Uncle Milty promptly had a big ol’ meltdown.  Sorry ‘bout that.

The Ollie the Optimist award goes to all the Met’s fans who were predicting a “lost season”, “.500 ball at best”, and other such fortunes for their team. 

Ummm…yeah, guess they were a bit hard on the Orange and Blue , eh?  But it’s fun out there on the right coast to be all gloomy, grumpy and glum I guess. 

So sorry.

Always a crowd pleaser, the Biggest Jerk Sports Fan  award goes once again to the Phillies , who had a guy named Matt Clemmens intentionally puke on another fan at the game.   Nice. 

Wonder if he ate at Pat’s or Geno’s beforehand?  Betcha he wants a do over on that one.

Guess I shoulda held on those extra onions….

Baseball commissioner Bud Selig once again gets the dual Boss Tweed/Soccer Mom award for his policy of having every team be represented in the All-Star game. 

Even if they suck , and really don’t deserve to have a player named. 

Just like old Tammany Hall , Bud’s trying to spread around the spoils…and just like little league soccer futbol , he’s trying to make sure “everyone’s a winner .”

Who wants to see the best players…we would rather have a watered down version as long as everyone is represented, right?  (Jeezze, I thought we won that argument with the commies a while ago when the wall came down.) 

So score a big E for Bud on that one and drive him outta here in a Chevy Suburban , or some other soccar futbol mom gas guzzlin’ Sherman tank  sized vehicle (“It makes me feel so safe”).

Yup…we all think Ty Wigginton is a great All-Star…lets go O’s

And hat’s off to the California Angels who live in Anaheim but kinda sorta wish they were in LA for giving up on Bad Vlad Guerrero . 

Vlad has been pounding the living snot out of the ball this year for the Rangers. Award a big Bozo No-No to the halo’s for that.

Well…mistakes are made

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Kincaid’s is supposed to have one of the best hamburgers in America. 

Each morning they grind a fresh batch of prime beef, g rilled to perfection, served on a bulky roll, and garnished with your choice of any or all kinds cheese, crisp lettuce, sliced tomatoes, grilled onions, and jalapenos.  Yummy. 

There’s nothing like a big old grease bomb washed down with some cold barley soup to make a man feel good about life.  The place started as a grocery store in West Fort Worth and annually got on several of the best in the U.S. lists. A few years ago they decided to expand a bit. 

This is why I can munch them here, at LaGrave Field, watching the minor league Fort Worth Cats. It’s the same fresh beef and same tasty burgers.  Burp. They makes those Shake Shack things they serve up in the Big Apple look like Monica Lewinsky compared to Marilyn Monroe, or Dominos compared to Ray’s pizza. A pale imitation of the real deal.

Now, it has been a good baseball here in the Metroplex. The Rangers are bankrupt, have a candy snortin’ manager, a recovered addict outfielder, and are playing their tails off in first place. TCU is in the College World Series and just won again. 

But watching the Cats in LeGrave can be kind of special.

The first LeGrave existed from 1926 to 1967 when it was torn down. Thirty five years later, the only thing left was an empty field. In 2002, it was decided to build another ballpark where the old one had stood, excavation began, and the old dugouts were found. 

So now the park is the only one in America with four dugouts. The old ones are rented out for group events.

The Fort Worth Cats, an Independent Association team, play here.  They’re the lowest rung of the baseball hierarchy. At best a player or two each year goes on to “the show”. 

As such, the Cats exhibit the quirkiness that baseball in the lower rungs displays with such aplomb.  Guy hits a homer and people pass the hat for him.  The same thing happens for a pitcher who strikes out the side. These kids are making less than two grand a month after all. 

Regular fans know the players by first name and vice versa.  Kate Hudson has been conspicuously absent from the proceedings.

Cornball promotions…we got em. 

There are fireworks at nights, Thirsty Thursdays with cheap beers, salsa nights, and other hi-jinks. The Girl’s Scout and Boy’s Scout sleep over and kids get to run the base paths at the endy of every game. Sometimes, grown ups do it as well. 

The national anthem is sung by a local, often off key, and parking is two bucks. It’s pure baseball and there is not a bad seat in the house. 

And of course, there’s first base coach Wayne Terwilliger. 

Twig, as he is know, has been in baseball a long time. His professional baseball career began, after all, in 1948.  He managed the Cats for three years and in 2005 became only the second 80 year old to manage a professional baseball team.  The first was Connie Mack. 

Older than dirt and wiser than a shaman, he’s on a first name basis with noted baseball gnome, Dom Zimmer, amongst others. 

Which leads me to why LaGrave is hallowed ground and of particular interest to fans from the New York area.  From 1926 to 1965, LaGrave, in its first incarnation, was the home to the Fort Worth Panthers and then Cats minor league ball teams. And from post World War II through 1960, the Cats served as the Texas League franchise for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

This means greats such as Duke Snyder, Don Drydale and Maury Wills called it home.  It hosted luminaries such as Hank Aaron, Yogi Berra, Willie Mays and Brooks Robinson.  Lou Gehrig played here early in his career, as did Babe Ruth.  In all, 47 Hall of Famers played at LaGrave, taking their first steps to baseball immortality.

So if you squint just right, as the June Bugs swirl around the lights in the warm Texas sky and the Fort Worth skyline rises over the right field bleacher seats, you might be able to see a young Joe DiMaggio striding toward a fly ball, or a green Bob Lemon working on a change up to add to his heater. 

And who knows, maybe the kid currently playing shortstop and turning that double play will be getting his own Topps card in the near future.

Ah, baseball.  It’s America’s game.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Baseball is a sport that transcends time. It is one of the few activities in America that a Civil War veteran, if he was miraculously raised from the dead, would understand.

And the uniforms have changed a bit, but are still generally recognizable. The socks and stirrups get a little longer or shorter depending on the era, and the clothes are not as baggy now since they are made out of super-duper high tech sweat absorbent space age materials now, but the overall look is the same.

Some uniforms have stood the test of time. The Dodgers, with their classic script, comes to mind. The Yankees with their pinstripes. St. Louis, with the redbirds astride the baseball bat. The Red Sox home whites.

There have been some mistakes, however. Let’s take a look at the all time worst uniforms that baseball executives have decided to impose upon the eyeballs of the viewing public.

Begin Slideshow

It was a different world back in 1987.

No one had a cell phone. The Internet had not been invented. GM wasn’t broke. Barry Bonds had a normal-sized head.

And that’s when I learned to hate baseball mascots.

Some buds and I had tickets to watch the Pittsburgh Pirates play the Metsies. Now, mind you, getting a Buccos ticket back then was not the hardest row to hoe…the team was having trouble drawing in cavernous Three Rivers Stadium, which had all the charm of a Soviet era housing complex.

But these seats were behind the dugout…way past the budget of me and my Iron City brew drinking cohorts, who went to nearly every game that season in nose bleed nirvana. However, we had scored them for free from one of my customers at the bar I worked at back then while slogging through grad school.

The Bucs had put together a young, good club that later went on to win three straight division championships starting in ’88 under manager Jim Leyland. The team had the aforementioned Bonds with a normal noggin, along with Bobby Bo, Andy Van Slyke, Sid Bream, and Doug Drabek.

Plus, we were all looking forward to a Mets team that was just off of an ’86 series championship, what with Mookie, Hernandez, Daryl, and Dwight in their heyday. 

So we sat down to watch the game…and the friggin’ Pirate mascot got up on the dugout in front of us. Again…and again…and again. We spent a good portion of the game trying to peer around some schmoe who thought he was being cute and entertaining.

Siddown, will ya!?

Mascots are part of the dumbass side of baseball. The marketing stuff that teams engage in to “spice it up” and make it “jazzy” for a generation of fans who can’t enjoy life without the Ritalin they grew up ingesting.

They got started with the Philly Phantic and San Diego Chicken (what the heck a chicken has to do with a man of the cloth is anyone’s guess). Like fire ants and kudzu, which are also annoying, the trend seems to have spread through the majors unchecked.

Now, I’m a big fan of minor league ball. And somehow, the schmaltzy marketing crap doesn’t bother me as much at that level. It is the minors; after all…I expect some sideshow carney stuff. 

But the majors? 

Have some standards. It’s The Show.

Here’s my list of things that make a major league game…less major. Signs of the continued decline of our civilization.

Mascots

I love you, you love me, we’re a dysfunctional family…if you want to watch big furry things, watch Barney on TC. What’s next, free teething ring night?

“We Will Rock You”…

…and a bakers dozen of other really, really bad rock tunes played over and over and over again at the ball park. 

At DC-10 volume. 

What the heck ever happened to the organ, and conversing about the game during play? Nah. Let’s listen to some dead guy from England who wouldn’t have known a bunt from a swizzle stick back before he took the big dirt nap tell us how he’s gonna “rock us” whenever it’s rally-cap time. Bleeech.

Same goes for the stupid “Hey” song, sung by a guy who was convicted of pedophilia. Can it. Bring back the organ.

Different-Colored Jerseys

I’m watching the Rangers play the White Sox, and I can’t tell which team is the home squad! Why? Because the Rangers have on bright-red jerseys, and the Sox, for God knows why, blue.

They look like a couple of softball teams…I kinda expected to see “Dizzy’s Tavern” or something like that emblazoned across the front. 

The absolute WORST is the Red Sox wearing green…it’s just plain wrong.

Keep the classic uniforms classic. Home in white, away in gray.

Yeah, I know that other teams have created uniform visual assaults in the past…the Chi Sox in shorts, Pirates in the ’70s with those goofy-ass hats, and the old Astros’ LSD-inspired togs come to mind…but aren’t we supposed to learn from our mistakes instead of perpetuating them?

The Wave…

…is stupid. 

It was invented by drunk, stupid people in Seattle for the purpose of creating something to do during pro football television timeouts. Encouraging people to do it at baseball is also a dumb thing.

Dot Races…

…or any variant thereof. 

Is three-card Monte really so exciting? Watching people cheer to see the red dot beat the blue dot beat the green dot on a computer-animated scoreboard is, at best, an appalling demonstration of how the educational system in America has completely and utterly failed our society.

I mean…they’re friggin’ dots…on a friggin’ scoreboard…that a friggin’ computer generated. Mental masturbation without the orgasm. Go home and stare at some test patterns or something.

A Member from Every Team on the All-Star Squad

Classic case of the marketing guys overwhelming the common-sense nodes of the brains that run the game.

Sometimes a team sucks and really doesn’t deserve to have a member on the team. Like the Pirates. It’s not little league soccer, where everyone wins and we don’t want to hurt anyone’s self esteem. Best players should be on it. End of story.

No Beer After the Seventh Inning

This one is always marketed as “family-friendly.”

The mommy state strikes again. If someone is drunk and disorderly, toss ’em. Otherwise, allow us grownups to drink beer until the end of the game if we choose to. Unless we’re moving to Sharia law here in the states.

Instant Replay

Brought to you by the robotic, control-freak NFL where everything must be controlled by Big Brother.

Except, you know what? Surprise—replay isn’t perfect.

But at least when it was just the umps, it didn’t take five minutes to call it. Can the replay. Nothing can guarantee 100 percent accuracy, but that thing pretty much does guarantee there will be a long delay.

I wouldn’t mind, however, for some brave marketing person to do a re-run of that mother of all baseball promos gone bad, disco demolition night. 

Just to see some stuff git blowed up.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com