By now it’s no secret that i’ve been chipping away at my goal of seeing a game at every major league ballpark. Now that the 2018 season is upon us, I thought it would be the perfect time to update you on my quest and ask you the readers what I should tackle next?
Coming into this MLB season I’ve been to 12 ballparks all while experiencing some amazing highs (Pirates, Padres) and some spectacular lows (Yankee Stadium 2.0). My list is as follows, ranked according to my level of enjoyment:
Pirates
Padres
Cubs
Rockies
Brewers
Red Sox
Mets
Dodgers
Orioles
Twins
Phillies
Yankees
It’s kind of hard to do a ranking, especially when the middle of the list doesn’t really have any faults, it’s just that it didn’t have any memorable moments. I rank the Pirates so high because of the views from PNC. Situated perfectly on the river, it’s an incredible sight with the skyline and bridges in the distance. I also managed to snag a beautiful Pirates cowboy hat from the gift shop and free beer from a broken keg, dumping gallons of free suds into the concourse (and into my cup).
Wrigley was a bachelor party so good times were had, Petco Park was a beautiful summer night the weekend of 4th of July, and Citi Field is the home of my team the Mets, so I have a bit of a bias there.
Yankee Stadium did absolutely nothing for me. It felt like a place you’d go watch gladiators fight lions, let alone a game of baseball. It was too sterile, too corporate, all things that have been said time and time again.
2018 will bring my total to 15, as I will be adding the White Sox, Nationals, and Angels to the list.
Is there anything else I should hit? Would you guys like to see some video reviews of some of these places? Let us know in the comments and we will bring you the A+ content.
Sunday may have been the best sports day of the year with the Red Sox, Celtics, and Bruins each playing home games all while the final round of The Masters was going on.
Patrick Reed won his first green jacket yesterday and I don’t think anyone summarized that battle down the stretch better than the wifey:
Reed had a slim lead heading into the final 9 and Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth, and Rickie Fowler were all gunning for him. Reed was putting his body on the line though, broken hands be damned.
Rory couldn’t capitalize on a couple of missteps by Reed and imploded himself so he was out, but Spieth was putting on an absolute show shooting -9 on the final day to almost come all the way back to take it, finishing 2 back.
Rickie Fowler once again sexed up the whole course with his wardrobe:
Fowler quietly and maniacally hunted Reed down like the goddamn Terminator and almost pulled it out. It ultimately wasn’t enough as he finished 1 back as Reed set himself up to 2-putt his way to the victory. I watched the last 2 hours of The Masters at a bar by the Garden and the energy was awesome.
During all this, the Red Sox were getting their teeth kicked in on Sunday afternoon and after starting the year 7-1 I wasn’t too broken up about it. Eduardo Rodriguez looked lights out in his first start back since knee surgery with 7 K’s through 3 innings though.
Throwing 73 pitches in 3 innings is not exactly peak efficiency though. So I left my house and headed to the bar to watch the end of The Masters. After sitting down with a couple Bud Lattes the bar had both golf and the Sox on and it was some of the best TV I’ve seen all year. Boston orchestrated a huge comeback scoring 6 runs in the bottom of the 8th inning. All with two outs in the inning. Incredible.
Kind of a kick in the junk that Xander Bogaerts got hurt as he’s been red hot absolutely crushing the ball. But this team looks real good so far. I’m not gonna get crazy after a bunch of W’s against teams like the Rays and the Marlins who are likely going to set baseball back 20 years in the state of Florida this season, but hey you play who’s on the schedule.
Meanwhile the Celtics and the Bruins, who both lost in uniquely painful ways, played back to back games at the Garden. Props to the crew thats responsible for flipping that arena from a basketball court into a hockey rink in like 2 hours. The C’s blew a game to the Hawks that they should have won, but this team is fighting tooth and nail with bench players as we head into the playoffs.
Once the C’s wrapped up the Bruins were going against the Panthers and just need a W to clinch first place in the East. Now they obviously lost following a listless effort from the team, but the buzz around the city was palpable on Sunday.
AND to top it all off it was Rene Night with the Bruins honoring the legendary National Anthem singer who is retiring after 42 years with the team. I was at the game last night and let me tell ya, the crowd was Fired. Up. about Rene. I think possibly more so than they were for the actual game. The Bruins also really dug deep with the giveaways, completely mailing it in by giving away Rene Christmas Ornaments (in April) that were from 2010 to random rows of fans.
There were sports on TV basically from the time you got out of bed until the time you went to sleep. You don’t get that very often, but Christmas came early yesterday.
MILB – In partnership with Minor League Baseball, the Pawtucket Red Sox today announced a new initiative with the Latino community. The PawSox will change their name for virtually all of their Tuesday home games to Osos Polares de Pawtucket. The name Osos Polares de Pawtucket, “Polar Bears of Pawtucket” in English, was revealed this morning at a press conference at Ella Risk Elementary School in Central Falls, RI (a school that has about a 78% Hispanic student population)…The PawSox are honored to be selected as one of 33 teams among the 160 in Minor League Baseball to participate in this new form of outreach to the Hispanic Community. This initiative is specifically designed to embrace the culture and values that resonate most with participating teams’ local U.S. Hispanic/Latino communities…To distinctively launch this exciting new program, MiLB and each participating team created culturally-relevant on-field personas that honor their respective U.S. Hispanic/Latino communities. All “Copa” teams will adopt these new personas via on-field jerseys and caps to be worn during designated “Copa de la Diversion” games during the 2018 season.
I’m not quite sure what a Polar Bear in Pawtucket has to do with Hispanic heritage, but I am fully on board if it gets me this fire flames hat and jersey combo.
Minor League sports crushing it per usual with the jersey selection. Being a farm team’s marketing department must be the best job in sports. The players are there to get experience and improve plus oftentimes they’re getting sent up to the next level halfway through the season so winning isn’t really a top priority for the team. Just sell some tickets, bring some families out to the ballpark, and come up with 25 different jersey promotions. I’m in.
NESN – “There certainly seemed to be something of a leadership void, and Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia admitted Monday that former Boston manager John Farrell was part of the reason the club didn’t seem to enjoy itself in 2017. “The overall approach, every day, would wear on guys. It wasn’t people not liking each other. We all love each other. Trust me,” Pedroia said Monday morning on WEEI’s “OMF.” “There’s the mindset of, ‘You show up to the yard, you put your work in, you have your approach that day, and you try to execute it. If you don’t, guess what? You’re going to show up tomorrow and still be in the lineup. We’re all going to have confidence in you. We’re all going to show up and try to win and accomplish the same thing.’ That’s what wore on guys and made the season that much more grueling — when everything that day was more magnified. It put a lot of pressure on our young guys, it put a lot of pressure on our veteran guys. That’s the part, when you hear Mookie (Betts) or (Xander Bogaerts) say they weren’t having much fun, you don’t ever have a chance to enjoy yourself if you don’t go 4-for-4, throw a complete game shutout, or we don’t win by 10. You don’t look ahead to the end of what we were trying to build for.”
Color me shocked. Dustin Pedroia came out and admitted on WEEI that last year sucked because John Farrell just beat guys down. It seems like his approach was just a grind on guys mentally. As much as we like to rail on players for whining and complaining, Boston may be the toughest city to play in the entire league so its important to manage that level of stress. This is where I’ve always been kind of disapointed though considering John Farrell came up in the Terry Francona school of management. Pedroia said guys were stressing because they were hyper focused on day to day success rather than building towards something bigger. If a guy didn’t hit the cover off the ball one day he’d be worried about getting moved down in the batting order or getting bumped from the lineup entirely. Farrell never really seemed as comfortable managing the Sox as we all thought he would be when Boston traded for him with Toronto.
Compare that to a manager like Francona who was infamous for sticking with his guys, almost to a fault. Anyone remember Mark Bellhorn? That guy was a goddamn enigma. In theory, a pretty solid player, but holy hell was he frustrating. Half the time he straight up SUCKED. He was a disaster in 2004 with his double ear flapped softball batting helmet.
He hit .264 with 177 strikeouts, which was 1st in the American League and 2nd in all of baseball. He did have a .373 OBP though! But Francona knew the guy could hit so he kept going with him day in and day out. Guess what? In the long run it paid off as Bellhorn had a HUGE 3-run HR in Game 6 of the ALCS to force Game 7 against the Yankees. Don’t remember? It was the one that smoked a guy sitting front row in the chest, but he was wearing all black so Matsui and those dirty Yankees tried to play it off like it hit the wall.
So theres definitely something to be said for consistency.
Everybody remembers Game 6 of the 04 ALCS for the legend that was Schilling’s bloody sock, but people forget that was also this game:
But, I digress.
As a manager you could also go the other way and tell these professional athletes to sack up. I mean if I have a few non-productive shitty days at my job, my employer is most likely going to chew me out. If you’re not performing the manager is well within his rights to sit you down. But, and I think this is what John Farrell’s biggest weakness was, if you’re going to do that you have to communicate why to the player. Build them up. Co-mmu-ni-cate. And that is where Farrell dropped the ball. The guy just did not have the social skills or the management skills or whatever you want to call it to relate to his players on a day to day basis. Not to beat a dead horse, but again Francona could call Pedroia in to play a game of cribbage and while the two are having a friendly competition Tito could tell him that he has sucked lately and is giving him a day off. Whether that was good news or whether that was bad news, Tito could communicate.
One of my favorite stories about Francona was how he would go out during batting practice every day and if he had to have a talk with someone he would bring them behind the backstop to chat. It was in the middle of everyone and completely public, but nobody could hear what they were saying except Tito and the player. So he was a master class in dealing with the players and their fragile egos and getting the best out of guys. Hell Francona could call a guy into his office while he was taking a dump and have a chat. I don’t really see that kind of comfort level existing between John Farrell and any of these Red Sox players. So the hope here is that Alex Cora is able to bring back that warm and fuzzy feeling back to the players. Maybe Cora won’t be sitting on the porcelain throne when he’s calling in Rafael Devers, but hey its only his first year on the job.
As he should be. The guy was the Red Sox best pitcher last year, is likely to be their best pitcher this year, is a great spokesman for the team, not to mention he is legitimately mentoring the team’s top prospect in Jason Groome. The Opening Day start is his, he’s earned it.
Some say it should go to David Price because its his team and he has the seniority. Except Price has been a malcontent for the better part of two seasons in Boston, got in an embarrassing pissing contest with team broadcaster Dennis Eckersley, and has not pitched well consistently. I want to like David Price and believe me I realize that we need him to be good if the Sox are going to make a World Series run. But to give him the Opening Day start is the definition of coddling. Just because he makes the most money on the team does not give him the start by default. To paraphrase my friend Alec Baldwin, to give you the Opening Day start is to throw it away. The Opening Day start is for closers.
In all seriousness though, this gives Sale the unofficial title of staff ace, but it also lines up Price to get the home opener start at Fenway, which could be a fresh start for him and the fans. Lets get off to a good start and stop bashing the media and beloved team broadcasters and then we can talk. In the meantime though, we will continue to sell our YUCK merch.
JD Martinez has officially been introduced by the Red Sox so everyone can safely remove their finger from the panic button.
I fully admit I was starting to get a little nervous about the Red Sox shiny new toy, despite all the Boston sports writers rushing to their keyboards to defend the honor of the Sox and say this was totally normal.
Its definitely not out of the ordinary for any team to work in a clause in a contract to protect both sides. Think of when the Sox signed John Lackey and specifically put a clause in the deal saying if he missed any significant amount of time due to Tommy John Surgery, the Red Sox would automatically get an additional year added onto Lackey’s contract at the league minimum salary.
Now that ended poorly of course as Lackey blew his elbow out, activated the clause, and then bitched and moaned about said clause, and forced his way out of town via trade. So I honestly don’t know if those types of deals are still kosher in the MLB, but working language in that can activate opt outs is nothing new. However, announcing a deal is done and then not introducing the player for 7 full days is far from normal.
Whatever, either way the deal is done. It might not ever come out what the actual language was that caused the delay, but I think its safe to say, barring a very specific injury, JD Martinez is here for the long run.
Martinez does have an opt out clause of his own after the 2nd and 3rd year of the contract, but this is a guy thats already 30 years old and couldn’t find the deal he wanted after a 45 Home Run season. So you’re telling me that guy is going to opt out when he’s 32 or 33 in hopes of that mythical $200 Million deal? Sorry my friend, the days of guys on the wrong side of 30 getting that type of money are over. You can thank A-Rod, Pujols, and Miguel Cabrera for sucking that well dry.
Martinez is a good fit here though and more importantly he’s a veteran guy who’s completely reworked his game to get to where he is now. Seriously. He got cut by the Astros in 2013 and I mean the shit-bum Astros that lost 111 games that year, not the sexy 2017 World Series winning Astros. Then he signs with Detroit, reworks his entire swing and breaks out in 2015 with 38 Home Runs making his first All-Star team. Then in the midst of his career year, the Tigers ship him off to Arizona where he puts on a hitting clinic and finishes the year with 45 dingers.
So while he may not have that playoff/big market experience, he definitely has the adversity thing down pat. (Does that concern me in terms of consistency? 100%) My point is, a rough stretch should be no big deal to this guy. That could be very valuable in a club house that was filled with more dickhead diva types than blue collar types that willed their way to success. There were too many instances of guys like Mookie or Xander hitting a cold streak and instead of working it out, they went into the tank and had massive slumps en route to hugely disappointing years.
Hopefully another 9 figure contract walking into the clubhouse has the balls and really just the gravitas to tell some of these guys whats up rather than letting David Price run the joint all by himself. Think about it, theres not a lot of guys on that team that are 1.) good enough and 2.) paid enough to demand that immediate respect. Thats why this role has seemingly defaulted to David Price once David Ortiz was no longer around. Sure you could say Chris Sale, but I honestly think he’d rather be a lead by example type of guy. Pedroia threw his teammates under the bus last year with the whole Adam Jones scenario. Hanley Ramirez isn’t engaged enough to be a leader. Bogaerts seems to want no part of it and the rest of the team is full of young guys or part-timers. Your best bet is either Mookie taking on the role like he’s said he wants to or JD Martinez coming in and being THE guy. Only time will tell, but I am fired up to see this team on the field together.
ESPN – J.D. Martinez had no shortage of information to consider before agreeing Monday evening to sign with the Boston Red Sox. But ace David Price tried to make the slugger’s decision a little bit easier. “I’ve talked to him a couple of times,” Price said recently. “I told him we’d love to have him here.” Price, Martinez’s teammate with the Detroit Tigers in 2014-15, elaborated in an interview with USA Today Sports that was published Tuesday. “I told J.D. he will love the guys here in this clubhouse, but also told him he’ll get booed,” Price told the newspaper. “He’s a quiet, soft-spoken guy, but he’ll handle it. Besides, everyone gets booed. I heard Big Papi get booed many times in Fenway.”
Jesus christ this guy just can’t get out of his own way. Just lie to us. Just lie. Don’t tell me that you told a Free Agent Boston is a great place to play, but then follow that up IMMEDIATELY by saying its a negative shit hole and all the fans will boo you and are mean on Twitter.
“It’s tough here,” is how Price described his first two seasons in a Red Sox uniform, according to USA Today’s Bob Nightengale. “There’s just so much more negativity.”
And whats all this about booing David Ortiz? Many times? I mean maybe some fans did in 2009 (the only year from 2004-2013 he didn’t make the All-Star team) when he hit .238? That was also a cool 7 years before Price played for the Red Sox. Did fans boo Big Papi many times in the one season they played together in 2016? Ya know the year Ortiz hit .315 with 48 Home Runs and 127 RBI’s on his retirement tour? The year he had a 1.021 OPS, the 4th best of his entire 20 year career?
I call Kangaroo Court.
But, I digress. If anything, this tells you what JD Martinez thinks of David Price’s opinion. Oh its a miserable, negative shit hole? I’m in.
Meanwhile we have Rick Porcello going the complete opposite direction in his assessment of Boston when asked by Martinez:
“It’s honestly a pleasure playing in Boston,” he explained. “Yeah, there are tough times if you’re not playing well. You’re going to hear about it. But what’s wrong with that? Who doesn’t want to hear about it? Because when you are playing well, it feels like you’ve got the entire world behind you, and that’s all you can ask for as a player. That’s fair.”
Little tidbits like this make me wonder just how divided this Red Sox clubhouse really is. You have guys like Porcello and Chris Sale talking about how they love the pressure and accountability of Boston, which is the antithesis of Price who bitches about everything every chance he gets. I wonder if one of the veterans is going to, if they haven’t already, tell Price to just STFU.
Before the negative attitude infects all of the good young players on this team and they think its natural, encouraged even, to piss and moan to the media every time Dan Shaugnessy writes a mean word about you.
This is what guys like Price say they understand, but they don’t really get it. If you 1.) play hard and 2.) perform well you’ll be scotch. Hell even if you can’t do #2 but you still do #1 then you’re good in my book. Trot Nixon is a goddamn legend in this town. People to this day still lovingly refer to him as a dirt dog. The guy with a .274 career batting average and 137 Home Runs. That guy is revered around here because he played his balls off every day.
I’m not saying you can’t complain or you can’t get mad because that’s only human, but channel that negative energy man. Use it. Get pissed off. Pitch well for an entire season. But don’t cash those $31 Million checks every year while whining about every little perceived slight every single time there’s a mic in your face. And definitely do not tell prospective Free Agent signings that they will get booed by the fans if they sign here. Christ.
ABC – As the Boston Red Sox stepped out into the sun Monday for their first full-squad workout of spring training, owner John Henry maintained that he’s more concerned about W’s and L’s than the team’s Q rating. “We really don’t need to be popular,” Henry said. “We need to win.” But despite winning 93 games and the American League East title for a second straight season in 2017, questions were raised about the Red Sox’s likability. Although attendance at Fenway Park remained almost unchanged, regional television ratings were down 15 percent on New England Sports Network, according to Nielsen Media data, while sports-talk airwaves were filled with the grievances of dissatisfied fans.
If you’ve ever read “Feeding the Monster” then you know exactly what I’m talking about here. In the behind the scenes book covering the inner workings of the Red Sox you read about a young Theo Epstein going to battle time and time again with Tom Werner and the entertainment side of the Sox over player personnel.
Theo wanted to build a farm system and sign smart, albeit boring, free agents to, ya know, win. Tom Werner isn’t against winning per se, but goddamnit the Red Sox needed to be sexy. He wanted more big names, more story lines.Winning be damned. The team had to be marketable to more demos with more attractive stars. Seriously. Read the book, Werner said that shit. You think hits like Roseanne just fall into place? No way. It takes years of creative genius steering the ship and shame on Theo for not listening to the Neilsen Rating System more when building his roster. Guy never stood a chance as a baseball executive going up against brainpower like Tom Werner.
Goddamnit. Can you tell I’m still bitter about the Red Sox running the best baseball mind of our generation out of town?
Anyways, if we’re going to take John Henry at his word, it seems like he may be smartening up. He’s not exactly George Steinbrenner so he’s not going to just punt on everything that doesn’t directly lead to winning. But, Henry is a smart dude, he knows that popularity follows winning, not the other way around. If the Red Sox are hammering opposing teams all summer on their way to a World Series then they’ll be pretty damn popular. However, if the team is focused on signing guys based solely on their marketability (i.e Pablo Sandoval the Panda) well thats how you find yourselves in a shit storm you’re still digging out of 3 years later.
Its been a tough decade for the so called blood feud between the Red Sox and the Yankees. Neither team has really been very good at the same time recently. After the epic postseason clashes of 2003 and 2004 the two sides haven’t played each other in the playoffs even once. Before last year, both teams hadn’t even made the playoffs in the same season since 2009. In 2007 when the Sox won it all, the Yankees got smoked in the divisional round. In 2009 when the Yankees won it all, the Sox got swept in the divisional round. And in 2013 when the Red Sox went the distance again, the Yanks straight up sucked and missed the playoffs winning only 85 games.
The guys much smarter than me over at fivethirtyeight.com actually put together a graph last year, based on each team’s World Series odds, to measure how meaningful games between the Sox and Yankees actually have been over the years.
“From 2007 to 2016, the typical Yanks-Sox contest was only about as important as any old opening-day game. In other words, it was fun but no big deal.”
So we’re on the up ladies and gentlemen. Last year Boston won its second straight AL East crown and the Yankees came within a game of advancing to the World Series on the back of young, homegrown talent. All of that was BEFORE New York added the best power hitter in the game in Giancarlo Stanton. The Yankees, who featured a guy in Aaron Judge who hit 52 home runs AS A ROOKIE, just added a guy who hit 59 home runs. Ridiculous.
Well, thank god the Sox finally responded by signing one Julio Daniel Martinez.
It took a lot longer than most expected, but it sure is nice to take a team that won 93 games and then add this guy: .303 BA/.376 OBP/ .690 SLG with 45 Home Runs and 104 RBIs.
And for all the Yankees fans in my timeline talking shit already (its not even St. Patty’s Day yet) I’m just going to quote my man Jared Carrabis:
“After finishing last in the league in homers last year, the Red Sox added the player who is second in the MLB in slugging percentage (.574) since the start of the 2014 season behind Mike Trout (.579) with a minimum of 300 games played.”
A consolation prize he is not.
My point being though is this could be the first time we see Boston and New York square off in the playoffs in more than a decade. Both teams are stacked, young, and trending upwards. Sure the Patriots have taken the No. 1 spot in town and the Sox have won 3 titles since 2004, but I honestly don’t think thats why the venom between the Red Sox and the Yankees has dissipated. No, its because both teams haven’t been trying to kill each other for that next ring. If the Yankees and their loudmouth fans in the Bronx are standing between Chris Sale and a World Series appearance, you better fucking believe fans are gonna be fired up.
All we need is the opportunity, and thats what we have here tonight.
The 300s 