Almost worse even than the Trump regime are the New York Mets. Jacob deGrom pitches another 8 scoreless innings and the Mets do what? They get 2 hits and no runs for him again.
By now, if he pitched for the Red Sox he would be 16-0. I think he may become the first Cy Young winner with 10 wins or less. He’s 5-4 but his ERA is 1.687. I doubt the Mets have scored 20 runs for him in his 16 or 17 starts.
The METS are a crime scene. The announcers are the best, including Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez. Like tonight they’re talking about this player Rosario and how the coaches have been trying to teach him to lay off low and outside pitches and shorten and control his swing but he keeps swinging for the fences and what — and popping up.
Sorry, that is something you teach in Double A. The guy is a Double A ballplayer. When I was a kid baseball had 16 teams, 25 players to a roster. That’s 400 players. You had to be the best.
Now they have what, 30 teams with 24 players each? That’s 720 players. There are not 720 major league ballplayers in the world, never mind the country. There are 400. There were 400 then, there are 400 now, which is why you get teams like the Mets with rosters filled with AA players who have no business ever getting near a major league clubhouse.
The Mets announcers, who include Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez, who are really great and insightful, were talking about this guy the Mets have at Las Vegas, a 2nd baseman hitting like .360 in AAA but they won’t bring him up because? Because they have a 2nd baseman and they don’t see him at 3rd. At 3rd or short? Where they have Jose Reyes playing regularly and hitting .166. Duh Mets figure it out, bring the guy up.
They said he’s 26. The Phillies waited to bring Chase Utley up until he was 26, boy did they blow that and at least 4 years he could and should have been in the major leagues.
The Mets have to be the stupidest organization in baseball, which covers a lot of territory these days. But if you were Jacob deGrom, you’d probably look as pissed as he looked tonight and you would be right to be.
Baseball is eternal. You pitch the ball, you hit the ball, you catch the ball. In between you run and slide, play a little chess when the count changes and you get a guy on first.
Look up Pete Reiser, one of the greatest ballplayers who ever lived except he kept running into walls. He played mostly for teams managed by Leo Durocher so Pete got to play the day after a concussion probably a dozen times, on broken angles, with a broken arm I think once. Today, if they have a sore pinky they go on the 10 day list. If they have sinus trouble it’s the 30 day list.
In the off-season Carl Furillo, the great Dodger right fielder of my “Boys of Summer”, who won the batting title I think in ’53 or one of this years and had “a rifle arm” nobody ran on? He went back home to Pennsylvania every offseason where he was an ironworker to make a living.
In those days if you missed a game, someone took your job so they played really injured and no one counted the pitches and I am pretty sure I remember “Preacher” Roe pitching both ends of a double header, when they played eight of those a year on the regular schedule with an hour or so between games for a hot dog and a beer (for the players, never mind the fans). But I am wrong as my friend Jim Zurer (Hobart ’63) corrected me. It was Don Newcomb who on Sept. 6, 1950 started both ends of a double header against the Phillies. He pitched a 2-0 shutout in the first, went 7 innings in the 2nd, gave up 2 runs but the Dodgers came from behind to win 3-2 in the second game.
Please, let baseball be baseball.
This I remember when I was growing up in Brooklyn and L.I. The Yankees were sponsored by Ballantine Beer and Ale; the Giants by Piels, and the Dodgers by Schaeffer, “The one beer to have, when you’re having more than one.”
For all of that and this, you can have football. Baseball is the American game and has been since 1840-something; when it is said a game was played at the Elysian Field in Hoboken (there’s an historic marker in Hoboken at Washington Avenue and 11th St. that marks the spot).
Play ball.
Peeling the Onion 
I believe the Dodger who pitched both games of a double header was Don Newcombe….
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Thank you. Sounds right. But the fact is less important than the observation that someone could and did. How are you both? I moved back to the Princeton/Trenton area and am having a great summer here. I could go into the piece and correct it and knew I should have looked it up but, as noted, I knew someone had and that was the important point. I will also send this via regular email. And nice to know someone is reading my writings. I specially liked the one I did for and about July 4.
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>>When I was a kid baseball had 16 teams, 25 players to a roster. That’s 400 players. You had to be the best.<< I take your point but that analysis doesn't take into account the population increase since you were a kid. There are now twice as many people in the U.S. in 2018 than in 1955. So there should be double the number of major league ready players in the universe.
However, that doesn't take into account the increased competition for athletes that has developed with the expansion of other pro sports….basketball, football, soccer, hockey, etc. So your point about dilution of talent may have merit….
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