As Don Meredith, Nate Newton and Tony Eusebio have been proving for years, folks in Texas don't always move as swiftly as in the rest of our frenetic land.
And so, last weekend -- five seasons into that newfangled interleague-play invention which brought us the Subway Series and the Ohio Interstate Series and such eagerly awaited annual events as the Royals-Pirates Remember When We Used To Be Good Series -- Texas caught up with the rest of interleague America.
Yes, finally, thankfully, Texas had itself a Lone Star Series to write some new country songs about. And for that thrill, it could thank those innovative baseball schedulers, who were looking at a map one day when they noticed: "Hey, check THIS out. We've got TWO teams in Texas. Maybe they ought to play each other."
So last weekend, the Astros came to sprawling (the ultimate Texas adjective) Arlington, Texas, to play the Rangers. And frankly, we eagerly awaited all the massive Texas schlock and pageantry that was sure to come with it.
Because if we know one thing about life in our most humongous state, it's that Texans love Texas. They love everything about it -- their tacquitos and their barbecue, their big ol' hats and big ol' interstates, their steel guitars and their prize cattle, and, most of all, their sports teams (though not necessarily the ones that play baseball).
So imagine our shock when the first Lone Star Series came along last weekend deep in the heart of Arlington, Texas, and ...
Nolan Ryan didn't show up. (He did appear at the opening of a new leash-free dog park but had "other business" keeping him from appearing at the ball yard.)
And neither Willie, Waylon nor Lyle Lovett stopped by to sing the anthem -- any anthem.
And there wasn't a steer, a pregame tortilla-making contest or a special-celebrity-guest ex-Cowboy anywhere in sight.
Boy, what's up with that?
"No Tex Ritter, no George Strait," Astros broadcast-humorist Jim Deshaies reported from our Week in Review Lone Star bureau. "No J.R. Ewing. No Larry Hagman. Not even Patrick Duffy. And I thought they should have had an armadillo on hand. But I never saw one."
Amazingly, nearly 140,000 paying customers stampeded through the gates anyhow. And we're sure the atmosphere was festive and all that. But needless to say, if it were up to us, we'd have handled this series in way different fashion.
Just the way New Yorkers know they're at a Subway Series, darnit, if we were in charge of Lone Star Series festivities, we'd make sure that not one Texan thought for a single second that he was in, say, Missouri.
Luckily for us, we have a trained Week in Review quipster like Deshaies, who also resides in Texas, to help us out on this.
"We needed some big longhorns," Deshaies said, meaning the wildlife-type longhorns, as opposed to the defensive line in Austin. "We could have the starting pitchers come in on longhorns from the bullpens. Or if that didn't work out, they could at least come in on a wagon train.
"And the umpires should be dressed like Texas law men, with big badges. You'd know they were in charge if they had those badges.
"And how about this? Put the home team in white Stetsons and the road team in black Stetsons. That should have been a given. You've got your white Stetsons and your black Stetsons, and you can bill it as 'The Ol' Showdown in the Lone Star State."
Yeah. That's the ticket. That's the kind of Lone Star Series we would have had in mind.
Instead, about as Texas as this thing got was the prestigious Silver Boot, which will go to the winner of the most heated rivalry in baseball that never actually existed until a week ago.
Legend has it that the Silver Boot apparently traces back to the 1836 Battle of San Jacinto, when Texans reportedly played a baseball-like game the native Americans in the area referred to as "Nokahoma" (or, as we know it, "Wiffle Ball").
The winner got a silver boot. And in those days, we presume, that was an actual boot -- which hopefully hadn't been trampled by too many longhorns.
This Silver Boot, however, is made of crystal. Which means, Deshaies said, "that if you win it, you get to take the Silver Boot, travel around and try it on all the fair maidens' feet to see if it fits. If it does, you become the Cinderella team."
Deshaies says he's heard there's a rumor that the quest for the boot even has its own motto: "Win the Boot -- or get the Boot." But that one's still unconfirmed.
It's 100 percent confirmed, though, that the Astros took two of three last weekend -- both in dramatic, come-from-behind fashion. So they need to win two of three in this weekend's rematch in Houston to clinch the Boot.
But if they don't, the tie-breaker rule goes into effect: team that scored the most total runs wins the Boot. And that rule is trouble for Houston, which made the mistake of giving up 16 runs in its only loss last weekend (16-4, on Saturday).
You'd hate to have a prize as prestigious (i.e., breakable) as a crystal boot come down to another Jose Lima gopherball, though. So it seems to us there ought to be a better tie-breaker -- or, at the very least, a more Texas-like tie-breaker.
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Instead of run differential as the tie-breaker, shouldn't they have a virtual gun fight between the owners? ” |
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"Instead of run differential as the tie-breaker," Deshaies suggested, "shouldn't they have a virtual gun fight between the owners? You just use paint or lasers or something.
"So right after the game, if the series is tied, 3-3, you play, 'Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin',' over the P.A. Then you have Drayton McLane (Astros owner -- color of Stetson to be named later) come out of the first-base dugout with spurs on. Then Tom Hicks (Rangers owner) comes out of their dugout. And you recreate 'High Noon.'"
Now that is how you ought to break those ties in the Lone Star Series. Except that after all the money Hicks spent, there are doubts about whether he'd want to fight that fight himself or just hire his own big-name cowboy to fight for him.
"I guess if you consider his track record," Deshaies said, "he'd go out and sign Roy Rogers."
Visiting dignitaries of the week
We know ballplayers get invited to golf courses. We know ballplayers get invited to do the Letterman Show (at least if they win the World Series for teams in The Bronx). We know ballplayers get invited to card shows and mall openings and used-BMW sales.
But now, thanks to the controversial election of a former big-league owner as president of this whole darned country, ballplayers can get invited to Washington, D.C., to their coolest, most prestigious destination yet.
We are talking, of course, about a table at Citronelle.
OK, no we're not. We're talking, of course, about the White House.
It's not true that more baseball players than senators have paraded through the Oval Office these last few months. But it seems like it.
And the latest to stop by President W.'s house was a special, hand-picked delegation of New York Mets, led by a manager the President once fired in Texas, Bobby Valentine.
The Mets got to hang out in the west wing, visit the chief of staff, chill in the Rose Garden as President Bush talked global warming and shoot the breeze with the old head of state in the Oval Office for 20 minutes.
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"It was really cool," pitcher Al Leiter reported to Week in Review's White House correspondents. "I think we were in the Oval Office longer than anybody really cared for -- except the president.
"Dick Cheney was standing right by the office, waiting for him. And he didn't seem too happy we were in there talking about fishing in Texas."
What really went on in that Oval Office? You don't need to appoint a special prosecutor to find out. Week in Review has the full report, with assistance from Leiter and our Mets emissary, the Newark Star Ledger's Lawrence Rocca.
The security: For the most part in life, when players like Mike Piazza, Todd Zeile and Leiter decide they want to go somewhere, doors open, tables empty and everybody knows their names.
But when you want to stop by the White House, it's time to break out the license, registration and special FBI files.
"You have to give your Social Security number well in advance," Leiter said. "I'm sure they check it up and down, make sure you never did any protest marches. And if they see the way you voted, I'm pretty sure we all voted Republican. We did have Darryl Hamilton with us, and he's a Democrat. But he says he voted Republican. So they let him in."
The Clinton-ite: However, also along on the trip was Mets media-relations legend Jay Horwitz, a confirmed Democrat whose lot in life is to take massive abuse from Mets players for that -- and virtually every other -- reason.
But Horwitz was able to temporarily suspend his political passions and admit that "for a minute, you almost forgot he was the President. He was just a good guy."
Horwitz also has a master's degree in American History. So when the president was showing his guests various Oval Office artifacts and mentioned that his desk was originally made for FDR and later used by John F. Kennedy, Horwitz got goosebumps, both as a historian and a Democrat.
Then, however, each of the president's visitors were asked to pose, one-on-one, for a photo with Bush. And all Horwitz could think about was the grief this would earn him, especially from Piazza, one of his primary political agitators.
So Horwitz hesitated when he was invited to stand by Bush's side. And the president didn't miss it.
"Are you afraid of the president, sir?" Bush asked, as the Mets delegation erupted in laughter.
After a brief moment to consider his assorted presidential alibis, Horwitz went with: "I'm just a little shy."
The conversation: We're not sure what most conversations sound like in that Oval Office. But we bet words like "legislation," "bipartisan" and "Jeb" come up regularly.
Not with this group.
"The best was Dennis Cook," Leiter reported. "He asked stuff like, 'Where's your daddy fish in Corpus Christi?' and, 'How big's your land? Ya got hogs on that land?'
"That," Leiter said, "was great -- to hear the president of the United States talking about the hogs on his land."
Question of the day: At one point, the president was talking about his wife, Laura. He told the players she was extremely supportive and had no political aspirations.
"Oh," Piazza deadpanned. "So she doesn't want to be a senator?"
Quip of the day: It's a funny thing. But when many people meet the president, they feel compelled to thank him for something or other. When men in the 39.6-percent tax bracket meet the president, they know JUST what to express their gratitude for.
"Thanks," Piazza told Bush, "for the tax cut."
Don't play ball: We think both houses of Congress would agree that so far, the crowning achievement of the president's administration is -- what else? -- his new tee-ball field on the White House lawn.
So we thought for sure the Mets would have been invited to go take a few cuts off the presidential tee -- and maybe even "accidentally" hit a ball or two through James Jeffords' window.
Amazingly, never happened.
"Nah, that's way down on the South Lawn, and we were at the other end," Leiter said. "It would have been nice, though. Maybe I'd have hit a home run."
In other news: One thing the Mets noticed was that it wasn't as if the president had nothing to do that day but hang with them.
Before their Oval Office visit, he made a Rose Garden speech on global warming. ("Except it's not global warming anymore," Leiter said. "It's now another term: 'Climate-something.' It's all about semantics, you know.")
Then, after Bush finished up with the Mets, he had to rush off to address the country on the execution of Timothy McVeigh. ("I'll never forget that," Leiter said, "being at the White House the day Timothy McVeigh was executed.")
"I think we were a diversion for him between the McVeigh thing and the speech on global warming," Horwitz told Rocca.
"The deputy chief of staff mentioned to us that he was in a little better mood after we came out," Zeile said, "than when we went in."
The superstition: As we all know, the Mets hadn't exactly been enjoying their most stellar season ever BEFORE they stopped by the White House. In fact, they were just coming from Tampa Bay, where they'd become the second team all year to lose a series to the Devil Rays.
But the next day, they blew out the Orioles, 10-3. And the following night, they came from six runs behind to win in extra innings, 7-6.
So given how most ballplayers feel about otherwise-unrelated events that seem to change their fortunes, we wondered if the Mets might consider going to visit the president before EVERY game.
"Yes," Leiter replied, without mulling over any White House protocol. "Absolutely. But I have a feeling that, if we were the Texas Rangers and he was watching us from afar every night, he'd welcome us back often. But since it was us -- the Mets -- and Bobby V, his ex-manager. I don't think he'll want us to come back too soon."
Well, they could always pose as the cabinet.
Monkey business of the week
If we've learned one thing in the last week about our Week in Review audience, it's this:
We just can't write enough about the Rally Monkey.
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Well, it's about that time again. If June means interleague play, it also means it's time once again for those heretofore-defenseless American League pitchers to head for the nearest bat rack.
The bad news is, this results in fewer at-bats for Edgar Martinez.
The good news is, this results in almost as many funny one-liners as funny swings.
In 1997, when interleague play began, AL pitchers batted a spectacular .067 -- an average that makes Mario Mendoza look like Ty Cobb. By last season, they'd improved all the way up to an even .100. So at this rate, they'll be hitting .300 by the year 2025.
While we're waiting for the year 2025, though, let's take a look at three of our favorite offensive highlights by pitchers in the first week of interleague play:
O-fer-less in Seattle: Until a year ago this week, sweet-swinging Mariners pitcher Paul Abbott owned zero hits in professional baseball. Of course, that had something to do with the fact that he also owned zero at-bats.
But Abbott kept telling his buddies he used to bat cleanup in high school -- a mere 15 years earlier. And he picked right up where he left off by doubling off Giants stud Shawn Estes in his first career at-bat.
Once Abbott started, he refused to stop, too. He went 2 for 5 last year, then marched right up Thursday night and drilled a single off Colorado's Pedro Astacio in his first at-bat of this season.
"I've got a three-game hitting streak going," Abbott announced, to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's John Hickey, afterward. "But who's counting?"
Texas two-step: Meanwhile, the first team to have two different pitchers get a hit this year was those hard-hitting Texas Rangers. They even did it in the same game.
Monday in Dodger Stadium, in the first at-bat by a Rangers pitcher all year, starter Darren Oliver doubled off Luke Prokopec -- the first double by a Rangers pitcher since Oliver whacked another double on June 10, 1998, at Coors Field, and the first by any AL pitcher this year.
Later, in the eighth, Pat Mahomes became the first AL reliever to get a hit this season, by singling off Gregg Olson.
So if you're keeping track ...
Rangers pitchers at the plate last year: 2 for 20, with no extra-base hits.
Rangers pitchers at the plate after one game this year: 2 for 4, with one extra-base hit.
Oliver was especially worked up over the fact that he was able to bop one over the head of rightfielder Shawn Green, who was playing him like (what else?) a pitcher.
"I'm going to get on him for that, playing me shallow like that," Oliver told the Fort Worth Star Telegram's T.R. Sullivan. "He needs to check his scouting reports."
Twist and shout: Finally, interleague play also means the return of one of baseball's most entertaining spectacles: American League pitchers taking batting practice.
After watching his hitters do the BP thing this week, Tigers manager Phil Garner reported he had zero desire to witness these offensive exploits in a real game.
"I'm going to petition the commissioner to do away with the interleague deal," Garner told the Detroit News' Tom Gage.
If Garner would check the numbers, he would find that reliever C.J. Nitkowski is 2 for 15 (.133) in his batsmith career. But after watching Nitkowski hit, Garner said: "C.J.'s got a sore neck. After the way his head spins, he looks like the exorcist when he swings."
Ah, but was it the sight of watching a hitter who reminded them of Linda Blair that inspired the Tigers to go out and acquire Willie Blair? Hey, you never know.
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So OK. He's back.
For those who may have missed last week's Rally Monkey opus -- or for those who, for reasons you'll have to explain to proper authorities, somehow have missed this entire Rally Monkey phenomenon in general -- here's the deal:
You can find the Rally Monkey on the scoreboard video screen of Anaheim's Edison Field. His job is to appear, through the magic of monkey videotape, jumping up and down at critical moments to inspire the Angels to late-inning glory in that uplifting primate way of his.
And he's done that job as well as any humans on the Angels' payroll, too. This team's record, according to the club's hard-working monkey stat-keeping bureau, is 9-4 in games in which the Rally Monkey makes one of his eagerly awaited scoreboard appearances.
That makes him, by our calculations, not just the Angels' winningest primate but its winningest mammal -- since no Angels' pitcher has more than six wins.
Maybe he'll win the Chimp Young Award.
Since last we left The Monkey a week ago, he has been, well, idle -- since he only works home games. But because of his special monkey magic, he has had an impact on the American League without even leaving his cage.
The Chicago Tribune's Paul Sullivan reported this week that back on May 1, when the Angels were playing the White Sox in Anaheim, Paul Konerko's mother was in the stands. Naturally, it took just one glimpse of our favorite monkey for her to decide, in that motherly way of hers: "What my son really needs to win, say, a triple crown is his very own Rally Monkey."
So she headed for the Angels' stadium store and bought a stuffed Rally Monkey for her hard-hitting boy.
Little did she know that she was falling right into the Rally Monkey's carefully plotted trap.
Over the next month, Konerko hit exactly .152 -- the lowest average of any American League regular in May. While the White Sox searched for more traditional reasons for this slump, Konerko's father finally figured out the real reason.
His son had been the victim of a simple case of monkeyshine.
So Konerko's dad did what any responsible parent would do at a time like that. He told the Tribune that he found the monkey, "strangled and burned it," then tossed it in the trash.
Do we even need to tell you that this month, Konerko was hitting .350 through Thursday, with four homers and 15 RBIs?
Now if you didn't know any better, you might regard this as some sort of indictment of the true Power of The Monkey. But the Angels themselves know precisely what forces were in operation here.
"The mystique only works for us," Angels director of entertainment Rod Murray told Week in Review. "It's a spiritual thing, a voodoo thing -- for other teams to leave us alone."
Whoah. Consider that lesson well-learned. You can draft Jeff Gibbons. You can trade for Pokey 'Rheus.' You can add Kevin 'Ape-ier' to your rotation.
But if you don't wear an Angels hat, do not think you can just buy your own monkey, show some old Lancelot Link tapes or stop by the zoo and think you'll just automatically go ape?
The Angels invented this monkey. And clearly, he understands whose branch he?s dangling from. Remember that.
At least until next week.
Computer warriors of the week
As long as we're doing the Week in Review sequel thing, it's time once again to look back in on our two computerized combatants, Diamondbacks pitcher Curt Schilling and Phillies leadoff man Doug Glanville.
Ever since Glanville homered twice in one game off Schilling last month, then attributed his success to an atrocity Schilling allegedly committed on a Glanville character in the computer game, EverQuest, the two have been exchanging barbs about what really happened that day.
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A couple of weeks ago, Schilling claimed the big problem here was that Glanville was, in EverQuest terms, a "train."
Schilling then defined that term as: "some young dope ... who goes running off, full of testosterone, thinking he's gonna slay the world, only to come screaming by you five minutes later with 90 percent of the known monsters in the world chasing him down to skin him alive."
Glanville then retorted that Schilling's nickname, among EverQuest participants, was "Amtrak."
Well, not surprisingly, that attack has Schilling worked up anew.
"OK, let's get something straight here," he said. "If the term, 'train,' is to apply to anyone in this situation, it's not me. Dougie has done special appearances on the Thomas the Tank Engines Show, he's conducted and started so many trains."
Schilling mentioned that he has been hearing a lot lately about the "unwritten rules" of baseball, for reasons Ben Davis would be happy to explain. But in fact, Schilling said, in the EverQuest world, there are also unwritten rules.
"And Douggie," Schilling contended, "defied almost all of these rules on the day in question."
But Schilling says their EverQuest problems go beyond this particular day or even the characters they were using that day -- Cylc (Schilling's guy) and Billabong (Glanville's beloved dwarf).
Those two, he said, are really just their alternate characters -- their young, relatively inexperienced "back-ups ... Our main characters are two other guys, and that is where I think this 'problem' really arises.
"See, my main character, Scythehands, is a monk," Schilling said. "He's basically a walking Quisinart -- cut ya in half with one swipe of his hands. Doug's 'main' guy is a little pointy-eared 79-pound Elf named Nahir" -- time out here for Schilling to spew out a brief "how sweet" over Glanville's choice of names -- "that prances around the woods digging up grubs and eating up squirrels.
"In my opinion ," Schilling concluded, "there's some serious envy stemming from the disparity in testosterone between our two 'main' guys. And this has pushed Doug into the slandering of my young noble dwarf (Cylc). He knows full well that one bad word aimed at the Monk would mean the end of life for his characters as they know it."
That, Schilling claimed, is the real story here: testosterone.
"I mean no ill will," he said. "Never have.
"But should this traitorous slander of good men continue," he threatened, "I'll use whatever force at my disposal to rid the world of this train-starting, tree-hugging elf and his fat little friend."
Phew. This is starting to sound more and more like a Vince McMahon production. And to think it started with a simple attempt on our part to explain the only two-homer game off Schilling by any player all season.
But if Schilling thinks those threats will dissuade Glanville from telling his side of this tale, he needs to reboot.
Glanville denied any sort of character envy or testosterone shortage whatsoever.
"My main character is indeed Nahir, guardian of the forest, jack of all trades, master of all, a ranger of the finest skill," Glanville said. "Scythehands has fists of fire. I will give him that. Except as with most punk Monks in the world of EverQuest, his only recourse to an attack is to feign his own death.
"At this point," Glanville claimed, "all his friends get slaughtered by the attacking creatures, and he lays there in a scrap heap, acting dead like a dung beetle. Gutless."
And as for that testosterone "disparity," Glanville snickered, "Schill neglected to tell you that his character wears a dress. Enough said."
Phew. We can only assure you that when all this started, we meant it as a simple glimpse behind the scenes in baseball, to provide explanations for certain performances you otherwise would never suspect. We really had no idea these two guys would turn into computerized versions of Don King.
But now that we're down this road, if they want to continue to fire at each other, all we can do is offer them the forum. Because in a couple of months, they'll meet again -- on a baseball field, that is.
And only you lucky Week in Review readers will know the inside story of what happens that night. It's not about balls and strikes. It's about elfs and monks and trains and Billabongs. So stay tuned.
Jayson Stark is a Senior Writer at ESPN.com. Week in Review appears each Friday.
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