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Hall of Fame baseball writer Hal McCoy has retired from the Dayton Daily News after covering the Cincinnati Reds for 37 years. Hal's blog, though, will continue to be a must-read for Reds fans. He'll share his thoughts on the team this season and will file updates from Great American Ball Park. You also can catch Hal in print every Sunday in his popular Ask Hal columnHome > Blogs > The Real McCoy | Cincinnati Reds baseball news > Archives > 2008 > July > 02
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Lethargy permeates GABP
Several scouts from other teams over the past couple of weeks have said, as I related before, that Daryl Thompson is not quite ready for prime time.
On Wednesday, against the lowly Pittsburgh Pirates, that assessment might have struck home.
Thompson gave up hits to the first five Pirates in the top of the first. He lasted only 4 1/3 innings, giving up seven runs and eight hits, two of them home runs.
This isn’t to say I’m ready to throw him out with the dishwater — not yet, even tough he gave up four runs and eight hits in five innings in his previous start in Toronto.
If the Reds truly are building for the future (didn’t we hear this back in 1999?), then a 22-year-old pitcher certainly can learn on the job while working for a last-place team going nowhere — except to defeat when they hit the road, or play at home, or play a team below .500, or play a team wearing black, blue, red, green, rust, orange, teal, purple or fuschia.
Thompson said he couldn’t keep his fastball down. The Pirates kept it up — pounding it all over GABP.
The thing is, the Reds were able to come back in the second take the lead, 5-4. Jay Bruce led the first with a homer, Dunn hit a solo in the second and Bruce banged a three-run shot in the second.
That was it. From the third through the ninth the Reds had no runs and four hits and the Pirates piled on.
“We need to keep plugging along and it’ll all come together,” said Bruce. “Those two home runs don’t mean anything when you lose. We have the pieces here.”
Well, he’s young and knows not exactly of what he speaks. A few pieces? Yes, a few. But this puzzle has more holes and missing pieces than if the grandkid tipped the box over the toilet and flushed.
When somebody told Bruce to hang with ‘em, Bruce smiled and said, “Hang with us.”
This second straight defeat to the Pirates, dropping the Reds even deeper into the depths and dregs of the NL Central, earned manager Dusty Baker a post-game visit from CEO/owner Bob Castellini.
He wasn’t carrying cabbage or tomatoes from his warehouse, so we assumed there was no fruit and vegetable throwing.
“He comes down once in awhile, not often,” said Baker. “He came down to say, ‘Hey, man. We know what you can do. Keep your head up.’ I told him, ‘Our heads are down tonight but they’ll be back up tomorrow.’ “
Is B.C. frustrated? You bet.
“We’re all frustrated,” said Baker.
I know one thing, I’m sure Castellini is sorry he said in front of the world on the TV cameras the day after he fired GM Wayne Krivsky, “We will not keep losing.”
Since then the Reds are 30-35 and, yes, they’ve kept on losing and will continue to keep on losing. Book it, Dano.
As one Major League scout told me BEFORE Wednesday’s game, “This is not a high-energy team.” That’s for certain and it doesn’t lead to a high-energy press box, either. Pass the No-Doz.
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TweetKnee surgery for Gonzalez
For about 35 seconds Wednesday, I had a scoop.
Alex Gonzalez is having season-ending knee surgery Monday.
He was sitting by himself at his locker and I stopped to chat, asking him, “What are you doing?” He smiled and said, “Just killing time.”
Killing time? I asked how his rehab was coming and what he was doing baseball-wise to better strengthen his knee.
“Baseball stuff? Nothing,” he said. “Just killing time until Monday.”
Monday? What’s Monday, other than an off day.
“Surgery,” he said. “I’m shutting it down. I don’t want to wait another two months to see if it gets better. I want to get it done now and start rehabbing it so it will be better in November and Decemeber. That way, I won’t miss any more spring training. I don’t want to miss any more spring training.”
Gonzalez has one year remaining on his three-year contract for $5.375 million. He has a a mutual option for $6 million in 2010 with a $500,000 buyout.
Gonzalez hasn’t played a game this season, injuring his knee the first week of spring training. And he played only 110 games last season.
The scoop I had lasted only until the other writers saw me talking to Gonzalez and swooped in. But that’s the way it works. Sometimes I wish I could get players in private for interviews.
NO SOONER did I turn away from Gonzalez than I ran into pitcher Josh Fogg. He is still on rehab, but he drove from Louisville to Cincinnati on his own, without being told to do so.
“The workout facilities are better here than in Louisville,” he said. “Plus my wife and kids are here.”
Fogg pitched eight scoreless innings for Louisville on Tuesday and has pitched 8 2/3, a complete game and eight innings in his last three rehabs — throwing more than 100 pitches each time.
He is on rehab for a sore lower back, which hasn’t been sore for a month.
“I’ve been ready for a month,” he said. “What’s next for me. You’re asking the wrong guy. Nobody has said anything. If you hear anything, let me know.”
EDWIN ENCARNACION remains mystified as to why he was ejected Tuesday night on a play at third base by umpire Chad Fairchild.
Encarnacion slapped a tag on Pittsburgh’s Ryan Doumit on a play at third and Fairchild called him safe. Then, two seconds later, he ejected Encarnacion.
“First, I tagged him twice. Once on the butt and once on the hip,” said Encarnacion. “And I didn’t say anything to the umpire. Nothing. I didn’t have a chance to talk. He threw me out before I talked. I didn’t have a chance to talk. I’ve never seen that, never seen anybody get thrown as quickly as that.”
Fairchild said he ejected Encarnacion for throwing his glove, “But I didn’t throw my glove.” Encarnacion raised it and slapped it against his side, but didn’t throw.
“If he looked at the replay, he knows he made a bad call,” said Encarnacion.
FORMER MIAMI UNIVERSITY/University of Michigan football coach Bo Schembechler was at a Columbus dinner one winter and encountered Dusty Baker.
“I like the way you manage, like a football coach,” Baker said Schembechler told him.
Baker said he asked Bo how he decided who to pick when he had players of the same ability, “And he told me, ‘It’s in the eyes. You can read it in the eyes.’ “
One of my first newspaper beats was covering Miami when Schembechler coached there. He even permitted me into some of his pre-game and post-game locker rooms and I remember after one particularly displeasing defeats, Bo blistered the paint after the game as his players shrunk inside their pads.
After he finished, he saw me standing in the corner of the room and he said, “And you can’t print all of that.” Well, no I couldn’t. Subtract the swear words and the unprintables and he didn’t say a thing.
When I was offered the Reds beat and told Bo I was leaving college football coverage, he sneered and said, “Why do you want to cover baseball. That’s a sissy sport (and Bo was a great high school baseball player at Barberton, Ohio, high school.
I didn’t say anything, but years later Bo became president of the Detroit Tigers and I encountered him in Detroit when the Reds played the Tigers in an interleague series.
“So, Bo,” I said. “How does it feel to be president of a team in a sissy sport?”
He didn’t answer, but he also didn’t stay with the Tigers long, either.
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TweetA tale of pitching coaches
A day off and a fortunate choice, judging by what happened at Great American Ball Park Tuesday — a 6-5 11-inning loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates. Back to last place.
Amazing. They tied it in the ninth, they tied it again in the 10th, they have the tying and winning runs on base in the 11th after scoring a run, but with two outs Corey Patterson is at the plate.
Need I say more? Game over. Reds lose.
Some of you keep calling for the removal of pitching coach Dick Pole and want Leo Mazzone to replace him. Mazzone was the pitching guru for that great pitching staff in Atlanta during the ’90s.
Permit me to point out this little gem. Everybody knows Greg Maddux is one of baseball’s all-time best pitchers, right? No question.
Maddux pitched when Mazzone was pitching coach in Atlanta and he pitched when Pole was the pitching coach for the Chicago Cubs.
Guess who Maddux said was the best pitching coach he ever worked with?
“Dick Pole is the best pitching coach I ever had,” said Maddux.
That’s good enough for me.
Some of you would like to see Mario Soto as pitching coach. And there is no question he would be a good one, especially with the Latin players. He already is a mentor to Johnny Cueto and Edinson Volquez.
But Soto prefers working mostly at the Reds academy in his native Dominican Republic with occasional tours of the Reds’ minor league teams and an occasional stop with the Reds to counsel Cueto and Volquez.
To me, Soto was one of the best pitchers in Reds history, a mean son-of-a-sea serpent on the mound who wasn’t afraid to throw inside and knock down hitters who got too comfortable in the batter’s box or dug in too deeply with their spikes.
And he did it basically with two pitches — a better-than-average fastball and a change-up some people say was the best change-up in baseball history — a pitch he taught Cueto.
Soto suffered from pitching for some of the worst teams in recent Reds history. The year they lost 101 games (1982), Soto was 14-13 with a 2.73 ERA. They finished last again in 1983 and Soto was 17-13 with a 2.70 ERA. They were fifth in 1984 and he was 18-7 with a 3.53 ERA.
Now that’s what you call some kind of pitching.
Soto once came within one out of a perfect game, but with two outs in the ninth George Hendrick of the St. Louis Cardinals hit a home run off him, “Because I was stupid enough to shake off the catcher and throw a dumb slider,” he said.
What kind of competitor was he?
Dave Bristol, a former Reds manager, was a master bench jockey, throwing epithets and insults at opposing players. When he was a coach with another team he was on Soto unmercifully from the dugout when Soto was pitching.
It wasn’t a good day for Soto and when he got knocked out of the box he went to the clubhouse telephone and phoned the other team’s dugout, challenging Bristol to meet him under the stands.
Bristo’s momma didn’t raise a stupid son. Bristol refused and when the game was over he hid in the clubhouse while Soto was outside the door demanding his appearance.
“If I showed up, he would have killed me,” said Bristol.
Bristol was deathly afraid of snakes — any kind, even the common garden snake. One spring training, when Bristol was coaching third base for the Reds, a player surreptitiously slipped a rubber snake into the coaching box between innings.
When Bristol went to the box and saw the snake, he set a 20-yard dash record to the dugout and refused to return to the coaching box until somebody removed the rubber snake.
“Rubber, ceramic or papier mache, I ain’t going anywhere near no snake,” said Bristol.
When Bristol managed the San Francisco Giants, they went into a long losing streak and before one road game Bristol scheduled an early practice. He scheduled two buses - one for the practice and one for the time when the bus would regularly leave.
Said Bristol, “The first bus is for all those who need extra practice and it leaves at 1 p.m. The empty bus leaves at 5 p.m.”
Bristol was the manager of the Reds in 1968 when I covered my first major-league game. I was a sub that day for our regular beat writer, Jim Ferguson. Gary Nolan was suffering from a sore arm and was scheduled to throw in the bullpen that day and Ferguson told me, “Be sure to ask Bristol how Nolan did.”
The Reds won that day, 1-0, so after the game I trudged to the clubhouse and with the other writers went into Bristol’s office. Trying to be the great reporter, I asked the first question. “How did Nolan do today?”
Bristol bristled. His face turned red. He sputtered and spluttered. “We just won a great g-damn game, 2-1, and you’re asking me about g-damn Nolan?”
Scared the beejezus out of me. I think I covered four more games before I ever asked Bristol another question.
Many years later, when Bristol was back with the Reds as a coach, I told him that story about being a cub reporter covering my first game and how he blasted me into silence for several games.
Bristol laughed and said, “I used to love to intimidate young reporters.”
Man, did it ever work.
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