Is Texas GM John Hart eyeing Roger Clemens? His Rangers are one Clemens-like pitcher from becoming a legit contender for sure.
HATFIELD SPORTS DAILY DIARIES:
BY MATTHEW HATFIELD --- Monday, June 6th, 2005
Major League Baseball: Livan, Red Hot Rangers, Sputtering Yanks & More
Interleague play resumes Monday and I’m actually kind of pumped for some of these series’. Most of them are on the irrelevant side, but St. Louis has an important stretch coming up. The reigning National League Champions get the opportunity to strike revenge vs. World Series winning Boston. After that, the red birds face those vaunted New York Yankees, who are playing nowhere near their $200 million dollar payroll. The Yankees have been outscored 55-19 the last nine games (1-8). After reeling off 16 of 18 it looks like Joe Torre and company could be in some SERIOUS trouble if they cannot go into Milwaukee and win.
The team the Yanks lost to on Sunday and dropped two out of three - Minnesota - saw another brilliant performance from Carlos Silva. Silva, a 14-game winner last year with the Twins that struck out only 76, now has more victories (four) than walks (three)! But not he, Jon Garland, Mark Buehrle, or anyone else has pitched better in the American League in my opinion than Kenny Rogers. ‘The Gambler’ keeps winning and uses the three main pitches to get the job done: a change-up, a sinker and a cutter that lefties simply cannot drive. Texas GM John Hart and the rest of the front office may try to add another piece rather than subtract.
Is
Texas GM John Hart eyeing Roger Clemens? His Rangers are one
Clemens-like pitcher from becoming a legit contender for sure.
What really stood out to me over the weekend was what occurred on Friday night. Washington’s Livan Hernandez threw 150 pitches vs. Florida, raising the question how many pitches are too much? He’s more of a finesse thrower that uses a lot of off-speed stuff instead of heat so he can go deep into ball games. Weekend result for the Nationals: a sweep of Florida and first place temporarily. Temporarily is the key word as they need to built on it with a depressed Oakland team coming to town if they want it to be permanent.
Game 7: Pistons @ Heat
It’s pretty sad when I have other people in my profession telling me they want to see the Heat win badly. It’s also pretty sad when other coaches are saying the same thing to me. Lets face it - the Detroit Pistons are not a well liked basketball team and to be perfectly honest, they shouldn’t be for the way they’ve acted. Regardless of tonight’s outcome - Detroit should ashamed of themselves for the way they have conducted themselves in each and every game of this series - most notably LB & Sheed. I’m not going to complain about those ticky-tack fouls Shaq’s been whistled for. What I will say is if you heard Bill Walton on ESPN Radio’s Mike & Mike in the Morning last Friday - you know he hit on the head 100%. Larry Brown, a man with much class most of the time, has been anything but. We’re all tired of the Cleveland talk, period. What Pistons haven’t been called for at least one technical foul in this series? Brown’s gotten one, Rasheed has a few to his credit with expletives right by them, Chauncey Billups too, and even Rip Hamilton in the team’s superb defensive win Saturday night. Rip, you don’t need to go get T’d up when your team is smearing it in the Heat’s face in the fourth quarter without Wade.
As much as we hate to say it - the outcome of tonight’s game will partly involve how the referees call the action. Three other things will be key: rebounding, turnovers, and which team can take control of the foul situation early and late. Pick: Miami by the slimmest of margins - one point.
Do you know who won the French Open?
Rafael Nadal. I did, but I have to admit I only watched about five minutes (if that) of it this past weekend. Nadal became the second youngest man to win the French Open as Michael Chang was just a bit younger than him years ago when he surprised us all. His victory over Roger Federer was much more shocking than his Sunday win over Mariano Puerta. Fact is only a small percentage of Americans know who won or watched because there wasn’t an American in the semis or finals. No offense, but when Andy Roddick is considered to be the USA’s best tennis player it does not bode well for us winning Championships. I mean what has Roddick accomplished as far as winning titles go? Very little and he’s not even in the discussion with some of the more recent tennis greats such as Andre Aggasi or Pete Sampras. The women’s game is more popular, something you cannot say when you talk about basketball, golf, or any other major sports. Soccer is probably the only other sport alongside tennis that generates more fans when the women come out to play instead of the guys. And is that necessarily a bad thing?