Lee Lowenfish

Usually Memorial Day weekend is a good assessment of where the season is heading, the likely contenders and pretenders. Not this year. Except for teams who had no hope of pennant contention before the season began – the Marlins, the Cubs, the Astros, high among them – there are still many questions about who will be for real come September.

Will surprising Boston stay atop the AL East? Can the Pittsburgh Pirates finally have a winning season and even make the playoffs? Will the expensive California Angels (OK, Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim) continue to sputter? Well, that’s why we watch the games.

My Orioles have not cracked the 10-above .500 mark yet. Their high so far in 2013 is eight above. The oblique injury to the Birds’ most reliable starter WEI-YIN CHEN has definitely hurt the pitching rotation. (Years ago no one heard of an oblique, now the injury to it is very common and I think it’s because players overdo their workout regimens.)

The Birds have rushed last year’s number one draft pick KEVIN GAUSMAN less than a year out of LSU to join the rotation. He is yet to win though his first home start against the tough Tigers lineup was very promising.

How unlike the Orioles of Their Glory Years 1960-1983 – a topic I discussed in late May at the annual Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture. The great farm-developed pitchers of the 1970s like Mike Flanagan, Dennis Martinez, and Scott McGregor got their feet wet in middle relief before being thrown into the fire of starting.

That luxury is not available for an Oriole team that wants to compete again for a pennant after last year’s breakthrough season. So I wish Gausman the best as for the time being he joins the improving Chris Tillman, last year’s miraculous minor league discovery Miguel Gonzalez, Jason Hammel and the game but fading Freddy Garcia in the current rotation.
And here’s a wish that wunderkind Manny Machado and emerging slugger/.300 hitter Chris Davis keep up their good work.

“Did You Feel The Draft?”
Chicago Cubs area scout John Ceprini pointed out to me the other day that this year’s MLB Free Agent Amateur Draft occurred on the same day as the immensely important D-Day invasion of France on June 6, 1944.

One of the great clichés about baseball scouting is that it is a crapshoot. But an increasingly very expensive crap shoot. This is not football or basketball where the player is close to a finished product and the likelihood of failure is far less.

In the new collective bargaining agreement there is a strict salary cap on how much in bonuses can be given to players coming into the business. I have little doubt that some of the more conservative owners would like to see the salary cap come to the top of the scale too. That is unlikely but it still will be very interesting to see how much a free agent like the Yankees’ Robinson Cano will be lavished with if he enters the free agent market after this season.

"Roar Lion Roar!"
My Columbia Lions won the Ivy League championship last month, sweeping Dartmouth in a
doubleheader to win the automatic NCAA tournament bid. Over a thousand people gathered at Satow Stadium at Robertson Field (just north of the Baker Field football complex) to watch the Lions upset the favored Big Green. Usually a college baseball game draws in the mid-double digits with most of the crowd being family and friends of the players. So this was a special moment in the history of Columbia team sports.

On the night of my 50th college reunion, Columbia trailed New Mexico 5-0 in the 8th inning
and it looked like they would go two and out at the Fullerton,California sub-regional. I turned off in resignation my android that was tuned into the game on ESPN 3.

Lo and behold! When I got home I learned that the Lions had scored 5 in the 8th to tie and won it in the 13th. They did get eliminated the next night by Arizona State but for an Ivy League school to win just one game in a tourney with the Big Boys is quite an accomplishment.

Hail to all-sub regional All Stars Alex Black and Nick Ferraresi and coach Brett Boretti and associate head coach/pitching coach Pete Maki! First baseman/closer Black and right fielder Ferraresi just graduated and may their follow their pro dreams if they have the chance. Ditto junior-eligible Joey Falcone, the oldest player in Division I, just turned 27.
He served two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan and the son of former major league LHP Pete Falcone deserves to follow any dream of his choice.

One final Lion pride note - Dario Pizzano, 2012 Ivy League Player of Year, was just voted to Midwest League All-Star team. Dario, grandson of a former Red Sox batboy, is one of four Columbia men currently playing minor league baseball.

“Sleeper Film of the Season”
Mirra Bank’s “The Only Real Game” - about the efforts to build a baseball stadium and a baseball presence in Manipur, one of the poorest and most politically corrupt areas of the world in northeast India on the border with Burma. The last line of the film resonates with me every day: “Baseball is like breathing.”  Read More 

Thoughts As We Approach Memorial Day

I began posting this entry while listening to an old-fashioned two-for-the-price-of-one doubleheader on the radio. Alas, John Sterling’s self-absorbed droning and I fear his fading eyesight made his play-by-play unreliable and so I switched to TV.

Ah for the good old days when you could turn down an annoying TV announcer
and listen to the radio. That's not possible any more as the TV broadcast is several seconds ahead of the radio feed.

It was a make-up twinbill with the red-hot Indians leading the Yanks 1-0 after 6 innings. Cleveland's ace JUSTIN MASTERSON completed a 1-0 shutout but the Yanks won the second game 7-0 behind a rookie southpaw VIDAL NUNO.

Both teams are surprising the pundits in the early going. In fact, at 10 games over .500 as games started on May 13 (and ended on May 17), the Yankees were leading the American League East. Solid starting pitching and the presence of Mariano Rivera at the back of the bullpen has enabled the Yankees to withstand the losses of the superstars (in salary anyway) of Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Mark Teixeira and Curtis Granderson. Granderson is back now and perhaps Teixeira within the next month though Lyle Overbay has proven a very worthy replacement.

Cleveland’s pitching will be suspect throughout the year but reclamation project Scott Kazmir has begun to pitch well and so has Yankee retread Zach McAllister. And the Indians will hit with budding star catcher Carlos Santana (no relation to the guitarist), second baseman Jason Kipnis (a member of the Jewish tribe), shortstop Asdubral Cabrera and center fielder Michael Bourn, the expensive free agent pickup, providing some hope up the middle. Former Yankee Nick Swisher and former Oriole Mark Reynolds add to a potent lineup.

Vidal Nuno has been recalled by the Yankees since Andy Pettitte went on the dl again with an upper back injury. But the Yankees continue to win with VERNON WELLS providing a lot of pop in left field and he is still a good defensive outfielder. Players who can perform on both sides of the ball remain very valuable commodities.

I will have a lot more to report early next month. Am delivering a talk on "The Glory Years of the Baltimore Orioles 1960-1983" on Wednesday afternoon May 29 at the opening session of the 20th Annual Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture.
I never miss an opportunity to go to the Brigadoon called Cooperstown about 200 NW of NYC and 75 miles west of Albany. And I never miss a chance to talk about the Orioles the team I fell in love with when I lived in Baltimore in the early 1970s.

I've stayed with them through all the ups and downs of the last 40 years. The 2013 edition has some serious starting pitching issues that will have to be straightened for them to contend again. But it is consoling to know that with Buck Showalter managing and Dan Duquette as the general manager there are steady knowledgeable men at the helm.

The AL East as forecast will be one wild ride all year and might as well as sit back and enjoy it while of course agonizing from time to time.

For me May 2013 will go down as Cooperstown Month. I attended the opening of the "Diamond Mines" exhibit at the Hall of Fame on the first weekend in May. It was a special evening with tears flowing from so many on hand to see scouts honored at baseball's central shrine.

Hall of Famer Pat Gillick spoke eloquently as always about the vital role that baseball's talent hunters have played in constantly bringing new blood into the game. One of baseball's most devoted octogenarians Roland Hemond, who has been working in baseball since the 1950s, was equally moving in his praise of scouts. As was Roberta Mazur, director of the Scout of the Year Foundation who since the mid-1980s has been working to see scouts honored in Cooperstown.

"Diamond Mines" will return at least two years and hopefully will become permanent with its artifacts of stop watches, radar guns, and most intriguingly, scouting reports on at least 12,000 players provided by at least 300 scouts.

That's all for now - always remember: Take it easy but take it!  Read More