Weekly Hit Ground Ball: The excitement never ends

One thing that always amazes me about the MLB season is that a week never goes by without moments of great excitement.  As a seemingly endless supply of games goes by day-after-day, you would think that there would come a time when the drama cools off for a while.  But no, it just keeps on coming.

This week was no exception as we saw some highly-charged antics on the field and one of the most eagerly anticipated Major League debuts of recent years. 

You’re Outta Here!

There are many glorious sights in baseball that no true fan can ever get tired of seeing.  A curveball that bamboozles a batter, a sweetly-turned double play and a dirt-flying, lung-busting triple are three of the most common events that most fans will cite as a favourite.  However, for pure unconstrained pleasure, it’s hard to beat a temper tantrum.

The Red Sox-Twins encounter on Thursday set the bar high for the best ejection-filled game of the week.  The home-plate umpire was a guy called Todd Tichenor, a veteran from the Minor Leagues who was filling in due to an injury to the well-known Ed Montague.  It’s possible that Tichenor thought the teams believed they could get on top of him, so he wanted to show them that he couldn’t be pushed around.  That would explain why he was so quick to give four people the elbow.

First came the Twins’ catcher Mike Redmond.  He had barely begun his argument over Tichenor’s ‘safe’ call at the plate (Jeff Bailey scored on a sac fly) before he was chucked out of the game in the top of the seventh inning.  His manager Ron Gardenhire was allowed to argue for longer, but everyone knew what the outcome would be and, sure enough, he followed his catcher to the clubhouse.

The umpire wasn’t finished there.  Maybe he was working on the oft-cited principle in football, always denied by the refs, that the officials like to even things up.  If so, Jason Varitek was living on borrowed time and it wasn’t long before he was given his marching orders (over arguing balls and strikes) in the bottom of the same inning.  Terry Francona came out to allow Tichenor to complete the ejection set, which he duly did. 

Bagging two catchers and two managers in one inning was quite a feat by the ump and Francona added to the ejection drama by getting so angry that he fell ill and had to be examined by the Red Sox’s medical staff.  It all amounted to an impressive show.

Well, it was a good try, but their combined efforts couldn’t top Carlos Zambrano’s display of emotion the day before. 

The Cubs pitcher is known for being a fiery character and he blew his top when the home-plate umpire ruled that Nyjer Morgan had evaded his tag at home plate after a wild pitch.  Replays suggested that the ump, Mark Carlson, had actually got the call right, but Zambrano didn’t see it like that.  So when Carlson threw him out of the game, Big Z wasn’t about to take it lying down.

Zambrano’s volcanic retort began with him copying the umpire’s ejection signal, telling Carlson that he needed to hit the showers too.  While Lou Pinella bustled on to the field in a vain attempt to diffuse the situation, his pitcher angrily chucked a ball into the outfield and then fired his glove to the ground.

Worse was to come when he reached the dugout and found that someone had carelessly left an offensive weapon unsupervised.  Zambrano’s known for being more than useful with a bat in his hands and he showed off his powerful stroke by piling into the innocent Gatorade dispenser.  ‘Run for cover’ was the cry, while pitching coach Larry Rothschild meekly tried to stop the carnage (it’s unknown whether Rothschild was acting out of concern for his pitcher or for the Gatorade dispenser).

It was a virtuoso display by Zambrano that, according to the report on Cubs.com, left even a master of the meltdown craft looking on with pride.  “That was pretty impressive,” Chicago’s Milton Bradley said of Zambrano’s animated antics. “That was on a Bradley level.”

And when Bradley is impressed by someone blowing his top, you know it was a good one.

Walking in a Wieters Wonderland

Carlos Zambrano has made a habit of hitting the headlines in recent years, but it’s been a while since the Orioles have been the centre of attention.  Things have been going wrong in Baltimore ever since they were defeated by the Indians in the 1997 ALCS.  As they plodded through season after season without ever threatening to make the playoffs, their saving grace has been the Tampa Bay Rays, who they could rely on to keep them off the foot of the table.  When the Rays’ moved from being the AL East doormat to the AL Champions last year, the Orioles were left with no one to look down on any more. 

But just as they reached their bleakest moment, signs of hope were already shining through.  Last year amid the general gloom, Nick Markakis took another step forward to becoming one of the best young all-round outfielders in the game and Adam Jones showed glimpses of his great potential at Major League level, while a young catcher was busy making scouts salivate in the Minor Leagues.  Matt Wieters turned plenty of heads in Spring Training and it was only a matter of time before he received the call to pack his bags and make his way to The Show. 

Such is Wieters’ potential that the Orioles announced his debut several days in advance.  Expectations were sky-high by the time he stepped up to the plate for the first time on Friday night against the Tigers.  He responded by going 0-for-4, but no one was too concerned.  Wieters is set to be a Major League star and the Orioles’ resurgence has finally begun.