Sunblock, infield dust and…scorpions? Pitchers and catchers have barely unpacked, and we’ve already got the best and the worst of camp openings.
1. Best Use of Weights
It ain’t the heavyweight division it once was, but with Yankees ace CC Sabathia making it a point to add weight for 2015 and early photos of Boston’s Pablo Sandoval already sending him into a defensive crouch, it does make you wonder whether the AL East will need to hold weekly weigh-ins.
Sabathia told reporters in Tampa that he thinks he came in a little too light last spring, and before you start your calorie counting, allow, for just a pinstriped moment, that Sabathia may be onto something.
The late Hall of Famer Kirby Puckett didn’t exactly have a model figure, nor did old Detroit starter Mickey Lolich, who threw 300-plus innings over four consecutive seasons from 1971-74.
No telling whether Sabathia will follow in Lolich‘s footsteps and open a doughnut shop after he retires (no joke, Lolich did), but the big lefty did pitch at a Cy Young level for many years without limitations, weight or otherwise.
The 6’7″ Sabathia says he’s planning to pitch between 295 and 305 pounds this season after checking into spring camp last year at 275. He thinks that his significant weight loss before the 2013 season resulted in a so-so summer: 14-13, 4.78 ERA.
So far this spring, he’s checked out fine following right knee surgery last season. The knee will bear watching, of course, because a heavier Sabathia means more wear and tear on the legs.
As for Sandoval, a tweeted picture raised his ire during his first few hours with the Red Sox. It was unflattering, with his belly sticking out.
Panda’s response was to quickly challenge the tweeting reporter to work out with him. His best response, though, is to ignore it. As late Baltimore manager Earl Weaver, a Hall of Famer, once said about Boog Powell (and recounted here in this excellent Dan Shaughnessy column in The Boston Globe), “He don’t look fat to me when he’s running around the bases after hitting those homers.”
Look, not all sluggers fit the mold. Sometimes, in the cases of Jell-O, they’ll eat the mold. So what? As long as they can hit.
Why do you think they call the weighted rings placed on bats in the on-deck circle doughnuts anyway?
(And see, we got through all that without any reference to Alex Rodriguez being dead weight in Yankees camp).
2. Best Updated Reference to U.S. Steel
No-nonsense Yankees manager Joe Girardi quickly brushed off the expected spring circus around A-Rod, basically saying that it’s always a circus around the Yankees. Or, as former reliever Sparky Lyle famously called it, it’s a Bronx Zoo.
“One of the things I learned in 1996 when I came here is that this is a different place,” Girardi told reporters. “It’s different when you put on a New York Yankee uniform.
“You’re on one of the most recognizable companies in the world.”
So if rooting for the Yankees, as Red Smith, Jimmy Cannon, Bill Veeck and whomever else said, once was “like rooting for U.S. Steel,” what’s the modern equivalent?
We’ll go with this, while taking requests, for now: Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for Apple.
3. Best Dodge
Whew, what a media session for Cole Hamels on Saturday at Bright House Field in Clearwater, Florida. The Phillies ace did everything but go all Bill Clinton and say that his desire to stay in Philadelphia or to be traded “depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”
He says he wants to win, and he told Bob Nightengale of USA Today that “I know it’s not going to happen here.”
He’s right.
Except, now Hamels is in the uncomfortable situation of basically preparing for the season in a clubhouse surrounded by teammates who know Hamels doesn’t think they can win. And when he addressed the media, several Phillies officials, including club president David Montgomery, were in the room. So what is an ace lefty still owed $90 million to do?
“At this given moment, I’m a Phillie,” Hamels said carefully.
For how long, it’s difficult to say. The Red Sox have the prospects to deal for him, and who knows, Monday’s signing of Yoan Moncada may send them even more aggressively toward the Phillies.
One team that was interested over the winter, San Diego, is out. When the Padres signed free agent James Shields, sources tell Bleacher Report that effectively ended their pursuit of Hamels, a San Diego native.
4. Best Quote
The Dodgers acquired Yasmani Grandal from the Padres in the Matt Kemp deal over the winter, and largely because of his stick, Grandal is expected to eat into A.J. Ellis’ playing time behind the plate.
Ellis’ take?
“You know, in all honesty, I don’t need a title of starting catcher or a title of backup catcher,” Ellis told reporters. “I want to have the title of World Series champion catcher.”
5. Best Sight in Arizona
Easy: San Francisco Giants manager Bruce Bochy back in uniform Sunday following a procedure to have two stents placed in his heart.
These spring training physical exams not only are wake-up calls, sometimes, for the players and managers themselves, but they also can be lessons to all of us. You see how a visit to the doctor might have saved Bochy‘s life. It is a good example to all of us that we should regularly see the doctor.
So, the man who employs one of the most delightful expressions in the game, “buzzard’s luck,” when the breaks don’t go the Giants’ way, starts 2015 with some excellent good fortune.
And his sense of humor wasn’t harmed, either. He promises, “I’ve got another 200,000 miles on me,” and he described his condition as not being “a widow-maker.”
6. Best Sight in Florida
Matt Harvey back in a New York Mets uniform and actually, you know, pitching from a mound.
He left us far too soon, for Tommy John surgery, not long after starting for the National League in the 2013 All-Star Game at Citi Field. He went 9-5 with a 2.27 ERA in 26 starts in ’13, then the elbow blew.
Between him and the Marlins’ Jose Fernandez blowing out last May, the game lost two sensational young starting pitchers. Now, at least, Harvey should be back. The Mets are talking about him pitching between 180 and 200 innings this summer, including beginning in their Opening Day rotation.
What a treat that would be for all of us. But especially for Mets fans, whose team is very close to blowing past the Yankees as the best club in town.
7. Worst Development
Josh Hamilton could be out a month longer than expected following surgery to repair his right shoulder, and now it’s fair to wonder whether the five-year, $125 million deal the Angels bestowed on him will wind up being one of the worst of all time.
He’s 33, and in his final season in Texas (2012), he hit more home runs (43) than he has in his first two seasons combined in Anaheim (31). Battling the sore shoulder, he looked badly overmatched last September and in October, as the Angels were getting swept out of the playoffs by the Royals. (He was 0-for-13 with two strikeouts, and most of his swings were painful to watch.)
As of now, he likely won’t be back until at least May. And because he’s rehabbing at home in Texas, the Angels don’t even have a locker for him this spring.
8. Worst Spring Visitors
Did you hear the one about the scorpions in the White Sox camp?
It’s reminiscent of the time an alligator decided to visit the pool at the Detroit Tigers’ team hotel in Lakeland, Florida, back in the 1970s—or the time Torii Hunter “kissed” one there last March.
Not sure which is worse, but I may take the alligator before the scorpions.
9. Best Use of Time
The new Pace of Game rules, which I wrote about Friday, are sensible and, best of all, unobtrusive. Batters should be required to stay in the box during an at-bat. Pitchers and hitters absolutely, positively should be ready to go the moment the between-innings commercials are finished. If we’ve already waited more than two minutes for the commercial break, why wait another 30 to 60 seconds while players aren’t ready?
Maybe these changes will not shorten games significantly, but I’m not sure anybody is looking for that. Just tighten things up and remove some of the dead time. Play ball.
9(a). Best Backstage Visitor
At a concert earlier this month in Tampa, whom did Bob Seger see backstage but…Hall of Famer Al Kaline.
Kaline has a winter place in Lakeland, about 40 minutes east of Tampa, and the two Michiganders obviously share a connection. Seger told the crowd in Tampa how happy he was to see the Tigers’ Hall of Famer.
This reminded me of one of my favorite baseball stories involving Seger.
In the late 1960s, Ted Simmons was looking to get home to his family for a weekend with his then-girlfriend from the University of Michigan.
This being the ’60s, they did what lots of other folks did: hitchhiked.
Simmons was a first-round pick—10th overall—by the Cardinals in 1967, and he was working toward his degree during the offseasons. As Simmons told me two springs ago, it was November or December, it was cold, and snow flurries were making conditions even worse.
As Ted and Maryanne (now his wife) hitchhiked out of Ann Arbor alongside U.S. 23 North, a van pulled over to pick them up.
After Ted helped Maryanne into the front seat, he hopped into the back.
“I get in, all the seats had been removed, and there was a full drum set in the back,” Simmons told me.
As they drove away, Simmons thanked the driver profusely for picking them up.
“Where ya goin‘?” the driver asked.
“Detroit,” Simmons answered.
The van was headed toward Interstate 96, where Ted and Maryanne wanted to go, but the driver explained that he was heading west toward Lansing instead of east toward Detroit.
“He said, ‘I’ll drop you, and you can pick up another ride from there,'” Simmons said.
Simmons noted the drum set and asked whether the driver was a musician.
“What’s your name?” Simmons asked.
“Bob Seger,” came the response.
“I remember it like it was bigger than life,” Simmons told me. “He was just starting out back then.”
A local legend in the ’60s, Seger was known for playing hundreds of nights a year throughout Michigan and the Midwest. Then came 1976, when the release of Live Bullet in April and Night Moves in October catapulted him to superstardom.
As Simmons recalled, Seger had played the famous Canterbury House in Ann Arbor that evening and had another date scheduled in Lansing.
“He wasn’t huge yet,” Simmons said. “Then he got huge. It was just super for anybody to stop.
“He could have been a serial killer.”
Instead, he soon would be singing “Night Moves,” “Against the Wind” and many other beloved hits.
Simmons? Today, he’s a senior advisor to Mariners general manager Jack Zduriencik. And when his playing days were finished, Simmons, a physical education and speech major, went back and earned his degree from Michigan in 1996.
Scott Miller covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report. He has over two decades of experience covering MLB, including 14 years as a national baseball columnist at CBSSports.com.
Follow Scott on Twitter and talk baseball @ScottMillerBbl.
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