By Jeff Moss
July 6, 2011
DetroitSportsRag@gmail.com
What do “Humm Baby”, Alfredo Figaro, The Doors, Swedish automobiles, Moby Dick in comic book form and Edward R. Murrow have in common? They are all included in Wednesday Morning Mossisms™.
No Panic in Tigertown
So I went to my local newsstand this morning and picked up today’s Free Press and News (or I clicked on a “Bookmark”, one of the two) to see what the reaction was to the Tigers firing of pitching coach Rick Knapp.
I was curious to see if ANY of the local scribes would call Jim Leyland and Dave Dombrowski out on the carpet for their embarrassing dismissal of Knapp.
Well, there was unanimity among the two JOA papers in town.
The headline in the Freep was, “Firing pitching coach Rick Knapp sign of a panicked Tigers team.”
And in the News the headline was, “Tigers firing of Rick Knapp looks like a panic move.”
A panic move? A fucking panic move? Hold the presses here a second.
This was not a panic move. Instead it was clearly the path of least resistance.
A move of panic would have been admitting that the signing of Ryan Raburn was a colossal mistake and replacing him with Danny Worth.
A move of panic would have been RELEASING a guy you gave a two-year contract worth $3.4 million this past winter even though he was only arbitration eligible this coming offseason.
A panic move would have been permanently replacing Brandon (.196 BA) Inge and his 11.5 million dollar contract with Don “Quad-A” Kelly.
A panic move would be shopping Andy Oliver for a second baseman who could generate a modest OPS of .700.
A panic move would be calling up a 19-year old (Jacob Turner) to replace Phil Coke as the team’s fifth starter.
A panic move would have been burning the phone lines for a third baseman who can hit his weight until Nick Castellanos or Francisco Martinez is ready to assume that role.
A panic move would have been firing your third base coach buddy who you go on holiday™ (The British) with.
A panic move would have been shit-canning your hitting coach who you joke around with on the bench by putting used gum under his forearm.
As Tigers fans we would LOVE some panic in upper management regarding this fledgling team, but replacing the PITCHING COACH with your BULLPEN COACH? That isn’t panic.
I am not sure what it is, but how the fuck can you tell me there is any urgency in rehiring the same guy (Jeff Jones) that you FIRED just 2 ½ years ago for the SAME JOB?
Think about it for a second. The same regime that fired Jeff Jones because he was ineffective at coaching this pitching staff in 2008 has just been rehired to theoretically save Jim Leyland and Dave Dombrowski’s jobs??????
I am not sure why Rick Knapp was let go, but it wasn’t out of panic. I am not sure this crew even knows what the word means.
We are talking about a manager who refuses on a daily basis to fill out a lineup with the best available players.
A guy who would rather utilize the 25 members of his roster even though all of the resting of players over his tenure has never helped avert a second half collapse.
Panic? These same people didn’t fret when their HUMUNGOUS lead in September of 2009 dissipated to next to nothing and the Twins overtook them.
No, what Leyland decided to do during the last weekend of the season is start Alfredo Figaro. A guy making his fifth career appearance and who had already returned to the Dominican to pitch in Winter Ball!
This regime has never showed the slightest bit of urgency at the trade deadline or had the cojones to make a Kenny Williams-like acquisition during the season.
Nope, even with their collective seven figure gigs are on the line, they continue to act as cool as the other side of the pillow.
Hiring an 81-year old Roger Craig out of retirement to teach Rick Porcello and Max Scherzer the split-finger fastball would have been an act of panic, but promoting a guy from INSIDE the organization?
Actually, does anyone know old Roger’s number? I miss that guy.
Nobody Will Care About This Except For Me Department
I have to be honest, I have never understood the fascination some people have had with former WDFN host Jamie Samuelsen.
The guy was on the air for the better part of two decades in this town and could never hold an audience or garner a decent Arbitron rating.
When he got dismissed at “The Fan” I figured I would never have to be subjected to his bland, vanilla style again.
Even when he supposedly got a gig at one of the Classic Rock stations in town (does he spin Jim Morrison records?), I wasn’t worried because I never listen to terrestrial radio anyway.
But then for some [Verlander]-forsaken reason the Free Press decided to give him a blog three times a week. And because I am compelled to devour anything Detroit sports related in the print form, I find that I am torturing myself trice weekly with Samuelsen’s awful, vanilla takes.
Since my return to this column I have avoided going after JB because I don’t think many people read his coma inducing blogs.
Even when he wrote a defense of Prick Carlisle I remained quiet. I didn’t say boo when in typical Jamie Samuelsen form he defended Jim Leyland when Cancer Stick pulled Rick Porcello after 84 pitches back in May.
But this latest blog or article or journalistic shit stain was just too much. The subject was the most memorable sports movie athletes. I mean, if I had to write that sort of drivel I think I would ask Christy McDonald to run me over in their Volvo SUV.
(Now, I have no idea if they own a Volvo SUV, but I gotta believe the odds are about 6 to 5.)
Anyway, here is the quotation regarding the movie “Major League” from Samuelsen’s blog that I took umbrage with:
“(Charlie Sheen) decides to tell anyone listening that he took steroids when he played Ricky ‘Wild Thing’ Vaughn. I have no idea if this is true. I have no idea if this even matters. But I do know that Sheen was lying when he claimed that the steroids helped him jack up his fastball from 79 m.p.h to 85 m.p.h.
“If Sheen was throwing 85, then Jake Taylor was stealing 60 bags a year and Pedro Cerrano had no issues whatsoever with the curveball. Sheen’s a joke. And the fact that we’re still talking about him is embarrassing on a variety of levels.”
First of all, moron, it is YOUR BLOG. Did someone put a gun to your head to talk about Charlie Sheen? What the fuck is that all about?
Anyway, the minute I read this passage I went nuts because I love the movie, “Major League.”
I have probably seen the film 50 times (conservatively) and have read a lot about it over the years.
And one thing I had learned through behind-the-scenes info is that Charlie Sheen WAS INDEED a quality baseball player. That he could throw in the low to mid 80s and there wasn’t much trick photography needed during his pitching scenes.
So I decided to do about five minutes of research (4 minutes and 59 seconds more than Samuelsen did) to get to the root of this MPH issue.
The origin of Sheen stating that he juiced up was actually an oral history of “Major League” that appeared in Sports Illustrated this week. Sheen wasn’t telling anyone who would listen that he roided up to play Ricky Vaughn, HE WAS GIVING A SPECIFIC INTERVIEW TO SI!!!!
So the whole BASIS for this awful Samuelsen blog was this interview Sheen gave to Sports Illustrated!!!!!!! And in true Drew Sharp fashion (it must be in the Freep employee handbook), Samuelsen didn’t even BOTHER TO READ THE DAMN ARTICLE.
Because if he did, he would have read the following passage from former MLB catcher Steve Yeager who just also happened to act as the TECHNICAL ADVISER for “Major League”:
“ I didn’t have to do much for Charlie. We had him on a radar gun, and he was throwing in the mid-80s. With Tom we started with the basics as if we were teaching a young kid how to play. He was blocking balls. I felt sorry for him because I was beating him up pretty good.
Umm, yeah. In the article that Jamie referenced stating there is no possible way that Sheen could throw in the 80s, Steve Yeager CONFIRMED that he COULD!
But just in case the brilliant Northwestern grad might have missed the quote from the technical adviser, there was also this nugget from the DIRECTOR of the movie, David Ward:
“Charlie can throw in the 80s, but when we were shooting from behind home I would move the plate up 10 feet to make it look faster, so 82 looked like 94. He never complained.”
Yep, JB, there is no way in hell that Sheen (a high school pitcher) could hit 85 on a radar gun. Except for the fact that he did.
How fucking lazy does someone have to be to whiff that badly on an idiotic blog posting? I would compare him to Cerrano swinging at a curve ball, but, oh, never mind.
I think you owe Mr. Sheen an apology, Samuelsen. I am pretty sure you can contact him @CharlieSheen on Twitter.
Please use the hashtags, #Winning and #ImATalentlessDoucheBag. You can even convince yourself that the second tag is for the former star of “Two and A Half Men” and not you.
(If you want to read the very cool oral history of the greatest sports movie ever made, click this link:http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1187813/3/index.htm)
Are these people journalists or the cast from “Bring it On”?
I don’t want to go all Howard Kurtz on you, but what the hell ever happen to journalistic credibility?
Remember the good old days when the sports media actually just COVERED the events and provided an impartial take? Well, that pretty much went out the window with the IBM Selectric II typewriter.
This is what we have now. A media that OPENLY ROOTS AND ENCOURAGES FANS TO VOTE FOR A PARTICULAR ALL-STAR!
This movement first started appearing a couple of weeks ago when certain members of the Detroit sports media jumped on the “Alex Avila for All-Star Catcher” bandwagon.
Empowered by Avila’s victory, these absolute shills have now gone on the warpath for Victor Martinez’s candidacy as the last AL selection.
In the last couple of days I have seen Katrina “Manhands” Hancock of WDIV openly urge her Twitter followers to vote for the Tigers DH/Catcher.
Not surprisingly, the team’s TV color commentator Rod Allen has promoted the Martinez, “Get-Out-The-Vote” as well. Of course, unless Journalistic Credibility was a hot chick in a short skirt at a hotel bar on the road, he wouldn’t know it if it bit him in the ass.
MLB.com writer and well-known Tigers shill, Jason Beck, has also taken it upon himself to Re-Tweet the message. At least this idiot is attempting to maintain plausible deniability.
And then there is the curious case of this slob named Dave Hogg. Until I started getting heavily involved in Twitter, I had no freaking clue who Dave Hogg was.
It turns out he is a freelance journalist who covers the Tigers, Pistons, Wings and Lions for the Associated Press. You might have heard of the AP, they are usually a pretty credible source.
(From what I can gather this Hogg character is kind of a second stringer who assists Larry Lage with his AP duties.)
This abject dumbass has not only taken it upon himself to rally the troops for Victor Martinez (as part of this Victor/Victorino campaign), but he has done so in MULTIPLE languages.
Here are an assortment of Tweets from this winbag over the last couple of days. Now keep in mind this guy works for the ASSOCIATED PRESS:
“Dear #Phillies fans, it worked with BranTorino, now help Detroit again with #VictorVictorino.”
“Victor Martinez: b?t chuyên nghi?p #VictorVictorino #GoodMorningVietnam @melindaprince4”
“?????? ????????: ???????????????? ?????????? #VictorVictorio #VoteInTheUSSR”
“???????:????? #VictorVictorino #HelloChina”
“MLB has just put out a release giving the official hashtags for the 10 Final Vote candidates. Ignoring those in favor of #VictorVictorino.”
“The Tigers and Philles are going to have to team up again with #VictorVictorino.”
The guy is trying to get Victor Martinez into the All-Star game by invoking the citizens of Vietnam, Russia and China. Once again, I repeat, HE WORKS FOR THE ASSOCIATED PRESS!!!!
Edward Murrow’s bones just flew out of the journalist’s casket.
I was planning on making Hogg’s Tweets a weekly feature of my columns. I think you would be fascinated with his love for the WNBA and Diana Lewis’s daughter, but alas the man who has an uncanny resemblance to director Peter Jackson (if Peter Jackson ate Viggo Mortensen and Jack Black) blocked me from Twitter earlier today.
No more diarrhea of the keyboard for me.
Rats.