Baseball

One of the reasons why real racial issues often get ignored in life is because we are forced to slough through crap like this.

In comments reported by Yahoo, Orlando Hudson implies that MLB discriminates against its black players when they become free agents.

On April 2, we saw one of the Kansas City Royals' final bullpen spots get handed out to a young pitcher who has little service time.

Trevor Hoffman's quest to reach 600 career saves has become somewhat of a hot topic in recent days in Milwaukee.

Hoffman, the all-time saves leader, has blown two save situations already for the Brewers (3-4) this season.

For Hoffman, the Brewers announced this spring that Miller Park would feature a saves countdown in left field on the scoreboard. Fans can see a large banner of Hoffman, followed by a tracking of Hoffman's historic milestone save by save.

Like most Reds diehards, I'm treading lightly on praise right now, but it is soooooo hard to hide the enthusiasm. Oh, and this from the Enquirer today on twitter: @Cincienquirer Aroldis Chapman will make his debut in Louisville Friday. Tickets are, predictably, going fast: http://bit.ly/csEHc0

No doubt, it's been a rough week for the Baltimore Orioles. The roughest.

Blown saves, surrendering four leads after the 8th inning, struggling with men in scoring position. It's been downright ugly.

Luckily, things have been far more optimistic down on the farm, where the O's have had several sensational starts from their standout prospects.

I know I sound like an old man when I say it, but the Detroit Tigers starters need to go deeper into games to give the bullpen a break.

Five times the starter has lasted only five innings, and twice the starter has lasted six innings. Starting pitching has not yet recorded an out in the seventh inning.

I understand that baseball has changed. Gone are the days where complete games are commonplace, and even eight full innings now is quite a workload, but lasting only five innings—75 percent of the time—is a good way to burn out your bullpen.

Of course mere hours after I glorified the White Sox lineup for their work two nights ago, Chicago goes out and gets one-hit by Ricky Romero of the Blue Jays in a 4-2 loss. All this after I had bashed the lineup just days before.

What I'm trying to get at is that the lineup is inconsistent.

The impressive pitching performance by Ricky Romero who walked two, gave up one hit, a two-run home run by Alex Rios in the eighth, and struck out 11, was not the story.

Perfection is a word that must be used cautiously.

And perfection in the sense intended here does not mean always perfect.

Every fan of the New York Yankees can remember a base hit in the bottom half of a ninth inning of a seventh game of a World Series in 2001 when we all felt our team would win because Mo was closing.

We can also remember home runs in crucial games in Fenway Park which we could not believe Number 42 had actually given up.

But Mariano Rivera is perfection.

Mariano Rivera is the perfect closer.

The World Champion New York Yankees hung their 27th banner yesterday and passed out some very large rings.

But now we leave '09 in the rear view and look to what the new season holds in store.

After seven games in an odd 10 days that saw a forgiving schedule with three off days, the Yankees hold a 5-2 record.

Derek Jeter has started as hot as he played last year. Through seven games Jete has scored five runs and has 10 hits. Over a 162 game average that would give the Yankee captain 230 hits for the year.

Fox News and The New York Daily News are reporting that yesterday afternoon Jered Weaver and Matt Palmer of the L.A. Angels witnessed a 39-year-old man leap to his death from the top of Le Parker Meridien Hotel on 56th Street in midtown.

Both players are said to be shaken by the event.  Weaver would not talk to the Daily News reporter after the incident.

Palmer, however, spoke briefly and told the reporter that Weaver actually saw the man hit the pavement.