Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Shelley's Shoes

Some notes from today's exhibition game against Tampa, as gathered from various blog sources and Gameday:

1) Shelley's slide was dirty. It doesn't mean I don't like him as a player or that I'll never root for him again, just that his slide was, well, dirty. If you see a picture, his spikes are nearly taking Iwamura's manhood with them, and, well, I'm no athlete...not even a male...but that play wasn't clean.

That said, it's great to see these kids playing with some intensity. This is not Joe Torre's team.

1a) It doesn't sound like the pitch that buzzed Longoria was intentional, and that the umpire over reacted.

2) Albaladejo had a poor showing, which is bad no matter what, but when you're at this part of Spring Training, when you're getting called into the manager's office because he's about to cut you it's REALLY not good. Albie may have punched himself a one-way ticket to Scranton.

3) Posada had a double and Patterson pitched well.

4) Thoughts with Stump Merrill

5) SYRACUSE BROKE MY HEART. I'm sorry. I need to get it out there. I have tickets for tomorrow, Friday and Saturday, and I was hoping to get one last look at 'Cuse before I graduate.

The irony is that they won it all when I was in high school, and will have a better chance next year, when I am gone.

6 comments:

  1. Agree that Shelley's slide was a dirty play. But I do agaree it is nice to see that the Yankees will not be pushed around anymore.
    Rebecca - Sorry about Syracuse. Thought they might go a little further in the Big East tournament. Looks like they'll probably make the NIT.

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  2. Based on the pictures I've seen, I'd agree that Shelley's slide was dirty, but I agree that he should have gone in hard. He just overdid it. He should have kept it lower, or barrelled him over.


    The Rays, and Maddon in particular are most at fault however.

    1. Their guy ran headfirst into Cervelli when there was a path to the plate. Cervelli wasn't blocking the plate, he was in front of it ready to catch the ball. And even if he was blocking the plate, this is spring training and you don't do something like that and risk injuring both players. On top of all that, Johnson lowered his head and went in for maximum impact on Cervelli.

    2. Maddon has shown no compassion for Cervelli. He's never even asked how he is. There's something to be said for saying "I think it was a clean play, but we don't want to get anybody injured, I hope he recovers." Instead he gets all defensive and when asked if he'd have a talk with Girardi about it, he says "sure we can talk about wine or politics."

    So Shelley decided what's good for the goose is good for the gander. He played hard, went overboard and probably will (and should) get suspended.

    To me though, this whole thing is on Maddon, he easily could have diffused the situation but basically dared Girardi and the Yanks to come after them which they did.

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  3. Please do not ever forget what Joe Torre did for your team.

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  4. Totally agree, Rebecca, on Shelley and Syracuse. The irony is that I could have gone to SU, but since I grew up half an hour away I wanted to leave home. They won it all my first year away and haven't been close since I moved back north.

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  5. Josh - good point about Maddon. He thought it was a great play afterwards and then when he was told that Girardi was angry, Maddon stopped talking to the media and refused to discuss the play.

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  6. a still photo aint enough to condemn a player. take a look at the videos and tell me if it changes your mind:
    http://www.redlasso.com/ClipPlayer.aspx?id=c5cb46e7-89c0-4ec3-b94f-79cef142bb45
    http://www.redlasso.com/ClipPlayer.aspx?id=7497ca94-3c64-4057-81b1-7f38203c8d84

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