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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 > 2009 > May > 07
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Reds: as resilient as my underwear
Did I not tell you just the other day? This may be the most enigmatic Cincinnati Reds team I’ve seen in my 37 years. Up one day, down the next. But they are as resilient as the elastic band on my underwear (when the underwear is new).
I mean, c’mon. They get slaughtered 15-3 by the Milwaukee Brewers on Wednesday. Then on Thursday, with third baseman Edwin Encarnacion and shortstop Alex Gonzalez already out of the lineup, first baseman Joey Votto reports flu-like symptoms.
Manager Dusty Baker tears up his lineup card and starts over.
No sooner does he do that than second baseman Brandon Phillips reports flu-like symptoms.
Baker tears up another lineup card. Now his entire starting infield is incapacitated. What to do? What can he do? A fast shuffle. Quick adjustments. And, oh yeah, order some more blank lineup cards.
Adam Rosales at third, Paul Janish at short, Jerry Hairston Jr. at second, Ramon Hernandez at first.
That means Baker has both of his catchers in the game. What happens if one gets hurt or one gets thrown out of the game? Who catches?
“Janish,” said Baker. “After he pitched the ninth inning for us Wednesday (giving up five runs in the 15-3 loss), he told me he’d be the emergency catcher.” Heck, Janish would be the emergency bus driver or the emergency batboy or the emergency owner - whatever it takes to stay in the majors.
The batting order was different, too. Hernandez took Phillips’ spot at clean-up and was on base three times in the 6-5 win.
Jay Bruce took Votto’s No. 3 spot in the order and homered in the first inning.
Janish was not supposed to play because his arm was a bit stiff from the 35 pitches he threw Wednesday. But he had to hits, a walk, scored a run and started two early-game double plays? There was Tinkers to Ever to Chance, but this was Janish to Hairston to Hernandez.
At least it wasn’t the way famous sports columnist Jim Murray once described the double play combination of the early expansionist Los Angeles Angels - “Aspromonte to Fregosi to Avalon Boulevard.”
Fregosi, now a scout with the Atlanta Braves, was at tonight’s game.
But I digress.
The other star was Micah Owiings - on the mound and in the batter’s box. He struggled at bit, but lasted six innings and gave up five runs (four earned) and seven hits, then Nick Masset, Arthur Rhodes and Coco Cordero closed it off, Cordero’s eighth save in eight opportunities.
In the batter’s box, after the Reds gave him a 3-0 lead, Owings gave up three in the fourth, but remedied that with his bat. After Janish singled, Owings drilled a triple to break the tie, then scored on a wild pitch for a 5-3 lead the Reds didn’t relinquish.
Now the division-leading St. Louis Cardinals pop in to town for three and, well, let’s see what the boys in red really can do.
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TweetArroyo opens up about Manny Ramirez
What is it with these guys that they are willing to throw it all away - throw away their chances at the Hall of Fame, throw away their reputations, throw away all they have accomplished?
Now it’s Manny Ramirez - caught using some banned substance that is a female estrogen that supposedly tells your body to manufacture testosterone.
And this time it can’t be tossed aside with the favorite phrase everybody uses in regards to Ramirez, “It’s just Manny being Manny.”
This time it is Manny just being plain stupid.
Bronson Arroyo is more likely to miss a start than duck an issue when asked - and he hasn’t missed a start in more than a year.
So when he was approached about the 50-day suspension of former teammate Ramirez for using a banned substance, Arroyo never flinched.
“It’s pretty scary when you can go to the mall and you can buy something over the counter that ends up costing you one-third of your salary,” he said. “We just have to be careful what we put in our mouths.”
Arroyo and Ramirez were teammates with the Boston Red Sox and Arroyo didn’t hesitate to describe those bizarre days.
“At this point in his career and from what has gone on with testing and stuff since 2004, I’m surprised Manny got caught up in this,” he said. “Manny likes to act pretty stupid, but he is a pretty bright guy who is definitely aware of a lot of things. He tried to act like he is completely oblivious, but he isn’t.
“The years I played with Manny, he was such an introverted guy,” Arroyo added. “I’ve always said he was one of the strangest guys I ever played with. Everything you get from him outwardly is like an act. Everything. You could ask Manny if he likes hamburgers and he’d say yeah and he probably doesn’t like hamburgers. That’s the way he was and is. You could have somebody see him somewhere and then somebody would say, ‘Hey, somebody saw you at Appleby’s today,’ and he’d say, ‘I never left my room today.’ And you’d say, ‘What, it is kind of hard to miss Manny with his dreads.’
“You never know and honestly I think he’ll probably disappear for the next 50 days, probably won’t say a word about it, then come back to the clubhouse and won’t even acknowledge that anything happened. That’s the type of guy he is.”
Arroyo, though, says he is guessing. He is basing what he says on personal experience, “But trust me, nobody knows how Manny really is. Nobody knows anything about his personal life. Maybe one guy on each team. In Boston, it was our batting practice pitcher. Not even David Ortiz. Nobody ever really knows the guy. Everything he does at the park is all ha-ha, hee-hee, it’s all a joke. When he goes home, nobody really knows what he does.”
“It’s a sad thing because the Dodgers are playing good and he is a big part of that team,” Arroyo added.
Reds manager Dusty Baker just shook his head and said, “Fifty days is a long time and that’s really going to hurt the Dodgers and it is going to hurt his reputation. I just hate it that another star goes down. We sure can’t afford to have any more heroes go down.”
Added Arroyo: “This is just affirmation over and over again that steroids and human performance drugs are rampant in the game. What are you going to do? People tend to think when we in baseball go home in the off-season, the Cincinnati Reds are watching us every day, watching us individually over what we do and what we put in our body and how we workout. Everybody has their own program and their own life and do their own things. And honestly, in the locker room, guys who are best friends have no idea what goes on in the other guys’ personal lives. By the time you get to this level, everybody has learned to hide what they don’t want people to know about.”
Scary. Very scary.
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