I have to apologize for the amount of time that has passed since my last post. I went on vacation, I have been looking for a job, and quite frankly, I did not have that much to talk about. Things were pretty uneventful in the world of Major League Baseball and everything was running smoothly. However, while watching both the Red Sox vs Yankees and Giants vs Rockies on Friday night, two incidents occurred that gave me incentive to start blogging again.
I will start with the near heart attack I suffered as Mike Lowell got hit in the face, and subsequently hit the dirt, while trying to field a ground ball that took a terrible hop. The baseball gods need to give Lowell a break. The poor guy fought to get playing time the entire first half of the season, is only playing now because half the Red Sox starting lineup is on the DL, is retiring at the end of the year and is playing the last few games of his career. Now he is sitting on the bench indefinitely along with the rest of the 2010 Red Sox, but hopefully he will be back in the starting lineup tonight or tomorrow. Mike Lowell brings a lot to the table for the Red Sox. He is definitely a better than average hitter and although his range in the field is not what it used to be, he gets the job done at first base. The Red Sox need him right now. Although it is unlikely that the Sox will be making the playoffs this year, they are not yet mathematically eliminated from securing the Wild Card, and I'm an optimist. If this series with the Yankees is any indication, there is a slight pulse in the injury-ridden body that is the 2010 Boston Red Sox. As the great (Yankee) catcher Yogi Berra once said, "It ain't over till its over."
Moving on. All season there has been an interesting rumor circulating throughout the Major Leagues concerning the Colorado Rockies. A rumor started by Giant's broadcaster Jon Miller in this interview: http://www.knbr.com/portals/3/podcasts/murphmac/0708jonmiller.MP3. Due to the high altitude and thin, dry air in Denver, baseballs dry up and shrink, allowing them to travel greater distances, which in turn increases the home run frequency at the Rockies' home park, Coors Field. To combat this, the Rockies began storing baseballs in a humidor in 2002 to moisten them up and weigh them down. According to USA Today, the number of home runs and runs scored at Coors Field has greatly decreased since the beginning of the humidor era. However, a rumor that the Rockies are using non-humidor balls in opportune moments is now being disseminated by many in baseball, including the San Francisco Giants. The rumor states that the Rockies will mix non-humidor or "juiced" baseballs in with the mandated humidor balls and then use those "juiced" baseballs when they need to score runs in the later innings of a game. At first I thought the rumor to be completely ridiculous, but I did some research nonetheless. While I do not believe this rumor to be 100% true, this is what I have discovered: There is no third party responsible for putting all the baseball's in the humidor and then making sure only those baseballs are used in the game. It is up to the Rockies organization to be honest and only use humidor balls, meaning it is only too easy for them to cheat. Furthermore, according to the Rockies official web site, the team has hit 167 home runs this season and 103 of them have been hit at Coors Field. While home field advantage could be one explanation for why the Rockies have hit 103 home runs at home and only 64 on the road, hitting almost twice as many home runs at home is quite an advantage.
What really makes this rumor worth talking about after an entire season is Friday night's Giants vs. Rockies game, which took place at Coors Field. Tim Lincecum was pitching a perfect game into the 6th inning, when he gave up a bloop double to Seth Smith. The Rockies knew that this lead-off double was probably going to be their one scoring opportunity, and according to the Giants, the Rockies attempted to score that run from second by giving Lincecum a "juiced" ball. When Lincecum was thrown the new ball, he could tell something was wrong with it right away. Take a look at this video where he throws the new ball back to the umpire and makes a comment about juiced baseballs. Unfortunately I cannot embed the video, but you can check it out at this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StY_mGM-lU4
Lincecum is one of the most laid back guys in the game. I have watched almost every single game he has ever pitched and, even on bad days, I have never seen him get visibly angry. This is what convinced me, not that the Rockies are definitely cheating, but that Major League Baseball has to do something. According to sportingnews.com, MLB umpires will be keeping a close eye on the all the balls that come in and out of the humidor, but is this solution enough? To really eliminate the doubts people are having about the Rockies, a third party needs to take over the task of placing balls in the humidor and giving them to the umpires. Until the Rockies have no control over the balls being used in their home park, speculation about whether or not they are cheating will continue.
