Captain Edward John Smith, 1850-1912

I pulled a classic Captain Edward John Smith on Saturday.  How so?  Well, Captain Smith reportedly said, “I cannot conceive of any vital disaster happening to this vessel,” before he set out and sunk the Titanic in 1912.  Ok, so I didn’t cause a shipwreck that resulted in over 1,500 people drowning, but I did suffer from some majorly ironic foot-in-mouth disease when I glowed about Manny Machado in my first post in two years.  Since that post the world has turned upside down for the now villainous Machado because of a couple poor decisions in the recent O’s versus A’s series.  Our hyperspeed news cycle with its myriad talking heads have made Manny’s name Mud and call for his suspension mere hours after I wrote about the young star playing the game the way it’s supposed to be played.  Here is my perspective of this recent twist, and it’s not completely damage control:

In 2013, his first full season, Manny lit up the field as few 20-21 year-olds ever have.  He led baseball in doubles and earned the Platinum Glove, meaning he was the best defensive player in the American League.  At the very end of the season he blew out his knee, potentially ending his bright young career.  He rehabbed this winter and missed the start of this season, and when he finally started playing again in May, he wasn’t playing at his former level.  He’s currently hitting around .235 and he’s made uncharacteristic defensive miscues.  He’s not the toast of the town anymore, and as a 21 year-old he’s scared to death that he won’t regain his prior skill, which seemed to have destined him to be one of the great ones.

His young career hit a major speed bump and he’s having trouble with it, that much is obvious.  For some reason his troubles boiled over this weekend against the A’s.  First it was the “hard tag” against him on Friday (eh, it didn’t seem that hard, it just caught him off balance).  Sunday’s issues began with him thunking the A’s catcher twice with his backswing.  Ubaldo Jimenez sharted all around the strike zone and we were getting walloped 10-0.  Some A’s bullpen guy, Fernando Abad, felt like he could afford to plunk Machado to put him in his place – but I think the next detail is key – he threw at Machado’s fragile, surgically repaired left knee.  Manny obviously didn’t take kindly to that, and when Abad threw at Manny’s bum knee again on the NEXT PITCH, Manny made an ill-advised split second decision and let his bat slip from his hands and fly towards the A’s defense.  Both players were tossed after the scuffle.

Is Manny Machado compromised?  Is he now destined to become a spiteful young has been who allowed an injury to defeat his mind and ruin his career?  Will he spiral into the role of pariah and get quietly shuffled out of the league in all his wretched, spoiled talent?  Given my recent history with foot-in-mouth disease, my guess is: probably not.

Here’s why Manny will probably not become a sad, vindictive turd:

1.       Trend analysis doesn’t point to it – he’s played nearly a year and a half and this is his first flare-up.  He was tossed out of a game one other time for arguing pitch calls, but he doesn’t have a history of petulance.  He’s never been a maniac in the past.

2.       I think the pitches at his fragile knee are what made him snap.  If Abad had plunked him in the back like you’re supposed to, I don’t think Manny would have flown off the handle (pun intended).

3.       Buck Showalter is in charge.  With Buck at the helm, I don’t see Manny spiraling further away from sanity.  I like to think that Buck is too contemplative, meticulous, and observant to let that happen.  I’m guessing Manny’s public TV apology today was a condition set down by Buck, but I’m not sure.  I just have faith that a guy with Buck’s experience and respect for the game would settle down the young colt.

4.       Manny is surrounded by some potentially good baseball mentors.  Guys who know the ins and outs of the game and who have seen lean times need to step up and mentor him.  I’d look to JJ Hardy next door at shortstop and maybe an Adam Jones or Nick Markakis to sit Manny down and let him know he needs to take his lumps and lay off the bush league outbursts.

We’re fortunate that the O’s and A’s only meet for one more series this year (in July).  If this had occurred while playing an AL East rival, there would be the potential for many unhappy returns.  I hope maturity wins out in our July series.  Teams will definitely test the waters with Manny over the next couple weeks, and his future hinges on his response to these tests.  I hope for his sake that he grins and bears it.

Did You Miss Me?

My phone rang late last night around 0130.  I answered groggily and my wife jumped out of bed, thinking there was an emergency.  There wasn’t.  A buddy who I hadn’t talked to in four years was calling to chat.  In the span of those four years, he has gotten married, had a kid, and became a fighter pilot, but he wasn’t planning to talk about all that.  He wanted to talk baseball.  He’s a big Oakland A’s fan, and I’m the only  Orioles fan he knows, and he intended to talk smack about the A’s 11 inning triumph over the O’s earlier in the night (the consumption of frosty beverages probably contributed to his decision to call).

Besides merely lampooning the O’s and our failed scoring chance in the 10^th, he asked me why it’s been TWO YEARS since I last contributed to TPHB.  Apparently he’s one of those Bastards fans who compulsively checks for new articles and is perpetually let down by my lack of effort.  My secretary handles the bulk of my fan mail, replying to every gushing note of praise with our form letter that tells the reader to “Keep on slugging, pal!” with my signature stamped at the bottom to give it a personal touch.  In cases like this when the stalker/fan has my personal number, I have to deal with the peasantry myself…at 0130 in the morning.

The last time you heard from me the O’s were stampeding to 93 wins and an ALDS heartbreaker series against the Yankees in 2012.  It was our first winning season since the nineties, but a wildcard berth and a divisional series loss to the Yankees left me hungry for more.  Humans are greedy.  Today we’re about a third of the way through the 2014 season after another winning effort in 2013, and it doesn't suck so bad being an O’s fan anymore.  I’d love for us to be better, but the bad old days are tentatively behind us.  To bring everyone back up to speed since my last inspired post, I've created a list of stuff that I currently like, spanning the spectrum to stuff I currently hate.  You’re welcome.

↓ STUFF I LIKE ↓

-          Manny Machado.  He approaches the game with hustle, humility, and preparation.  Most talented young guys these days miss the boat on at least a few of those traits.  More on that topic later, but Manny approaches the game properly and he’s a joy to watch.  His blown-out knee at the end of last season was the absolute worst thing that happened over those 162 games.  Let's hope he gets back his graceful excellence as the season progresses.

-          Baseball GIFs and memes.  I’m still not sure if you pronounce it “meem” or “mim”.  I’ve used both in public and based on people’s normal reactions to both options, I don’t think I’m alone in my uncertainty.

-          The Rays are playing like the Devil Rays.  Tampa Bay is currently 24 – 38 and I’m loving it McDonald’s style.  They’ve been annoyingly good for long enough.

-          Alex Roidriguez has 0 at bats this year.

-          Dragons.

-          The Red Sox outfielders are on pace to have the worst collective batting average (.215) than any set of outfielders EVER in the 162 game era (53 years).  I’m on the fence about whether or not Boston is any good this season – they could always make a run.  I’m still reeling from them bouncing back from a 93 loss season in 2012 to win the World Series last year.  Who the frick saw that coming?

-          The Pirates are just slightly worse than the O’s right now. That’s how I like to keep things due to me and Mark’s perpetual Case Race.  I like the Buccos and I hope they do just well enough to be one game back from the Orioles every year. 

-          Soon to be 34 year-old bopper Nelson Cruz currently leads the league with 21 home runs and 55 RBI.  We picked him up after he served a PED suspension, and no one in baseball is questioning his career-best numbers.  People tend to look back at the crazy home run numbers that McGuire, Bonds, and Sosa were putting up a decade ago and say “How could we be so naïve?  Of course we should have known something was going on.”  Well, guess what?  We haven’t changed a bit.  I hope Nelson hits 60 homers for us this year.

-          The O’s stable full of young arms.  Over the last, oh I don’t know, many seasons, we seem to have a group of golden-armed youths on the brink of the big leagues.  There’s much breathless conjecture on whether or not we should preemptively retire the newest stud’s number as a nod to his unarguable future greatness, and then guess what?  It don’t work out so good, does it?  Our young pitchers have not panned out – we drafted Matt Hobgood 5^th overall in the 2009 draft, leaving Mike Trout on the board to go 25^th (20/20 hindsight), and then Hobgood has trouble even succeeding in single A ball.  Brian Matusz is just a bullpen guy, Jake Arrieta is a Cub, and Zack Britton is our newly minted closer after Tommy “Give ‘em hell” Hunter found out that throwing fast just isn’t good enough (who saw that coming?).  Kevin Gausman is a shaky starter who bounces back and forth from AAA, and Dylan Bundy, the shining star on the horizon, succumbed to Tommy John surgery even while we babied his precious arm in the minors.  Andy MacPhail’s plan was ‘Grow the Arms, Buy the Bats’ – well maybe we don’t have the green thumb required for pitchers because these flowers done rotted.

-          Bryce Harper, Yasiel Puig, and Mike Trout.  These three young guys get more hype than a Kardashian wedding.  I really dislike the tendency to lionize individuals and crown them for potential actions rather than real actions (like giving the Nobel Peace Prize to someone before they serve in any peace-giving capacity #obamanation #boomroasted).  As good as these youngsters are, it’s highly unlikely that all three of them will achieve baseball greatness, and they might as well realize that.  Mike Trout is less of a show-boater than the other two, who definitely need to simmer down with the swagger and show the game some respect.  Yeah, I sound like a crotchety geezer, but someone’s got to protect the world from these kids with their wild bat-flips and flashy head-first dives.

-          Twitter, with its hashtags and such.  A couple years ago I signed up for a Twitter and tried to Twit some stuff.  I couldn’t figure out when to use the @ and when to use the #, plus I didn’t get the overall point of blasting my thoughts out to the whole dadgum world, so I went back to writing blog posts…#YOLO

-          What in the world got into the Blue Jays?  They’re hitting, they’re pitching, they’re taking your girlfriend out to dinner, and no one predicted it (they’re currently 5.5 games up in the AL East).

-          Miley Cyrus, Twerking, Selfies, Boko Haram, Justin Bieber, and the wholesale destruction of western civilization.  The world’s a sad sad place – go watch that KONY 2012 video.  Thanks for your selfless activism.

Sidenote: I really didn’t understand the First Lady’s #BringBackOurGirls viral anti-Boko Haram message…she’s married to the most influential man on the planet, instead of Twitting about it or whatever, why not bring up the missing girls over dinner?  I know it’s generally unpopular and distasteful to cast aspersions on the First Lady, but I just thought that was really odd.

-          Brian Roberts is a Yankee.  This one hurts, guys.  It hurts real bad.  My favorite Oriole of the Dark Decade (2000-10) is Brian Roberts.  He was an All Star second baseman, a spark plug leadoff guy, and just a good baseball dude.  I understand that he just wants to play and the Yankees gave him a job, but he has to understand that I burned my B-Rob jersey at the foot of my Cal Ripken Jr. shrine and mailed Roberts a dismembered bobblehead voodoo doll of himself.  Thanks for the memories, B-Rob.  You’re dead to me.

-          The Derek Jeter is Finally Retiring Love Fest.  Wow, let me take a deep breath.  The end of this season is gonna suck.  I was hoping this sorry excuse for a shortstop would get put out to pasture before I moved back to the US so I wouldn’t have to endure this ridiculousness.  And do you want to know what really grinds my gears?  These other baseball clubs who are paying his retirement any mind.  As if his career positively impacted them.  Give me a motherloving break.  The Chicago White Sox gave him this worthless bat-bench earlier this year.

Why in the world would you as an American League opponent bow down before this filthy Yankee and gift him with something so pathetic?  If I had been sitting in on a White Sox organizational meeting and some chunderbucket brought an idea up about honoring Jeter when the Yanks come to town, I would have busted his skull open with my Walkman.

I’m not going to watch the All Star game this year.  Derek Jeter will ruin it with his awfulness.  Good Riddance.

↑ STUFF I HATE ↑

~~When we seek to discover the best in others, we somehow bring out the best in ourselves.~~

William Arthur Ward