Home MLB'Weekly' Hit Ground Ball 2007 – Week 18

2007 – Week 18

by Matt Smith

Week 18 was bookended by two days that will live in the memory of many baseball fans for years to come.


Career home run records – Just like buses, you wait a week for a home run landmark to be reached and then get two on the same day. Barry Bonds made history last night, and put baseball on the main BBC sports page in the process, by swatting number 755 into the left-field seats at Petco Park. While Bonds was largely booed before and after the event, most of the spectators were cheering as he was rounding the bases. Maybe they were cheering their own luck at being there to witness it, but they were cheering nonetheless. The six-game wait between 754 and 755 must have felt like a lifetime to Bonds, although he will have to go through it again until he actually breaks the record by hitting one more.

Alex Rodriguez also had to wait over a week to move from 499 to 500, with the Royals’ pitching staff helping him out on both occasions. A-Rod is the youngest player to reach 500 and it was fitting that he reached the mark on the same day that Bonds hit his historic shot. Rodriguez certainly looks like the heir apparent to the career home run crown and while A-Rod himself isn’t the most popular player around (partly because he is such a great player, to be fair), he hasn’t been dogged by the drug controversies that have tainted Bonds’ achievements in so many fans’ eyes.

Bombs away – It was a strange week for A-Rod as while he was struggling to put one lousy long ball over the fence, his Yankee team mates were seemingly mocking him by blasting them with unerring ease. The Bronx Bombers more than lived up to their nickname on Tuesday when they smashed eight dingers against the White Sox. Shelley Duncan, one of the culprits on that night, was really rubbing it in by launching five homers in his first eight Major League games. I guess hitting is contagious in that Yankees awesome lineup. Two days later, they put eight runs on the board in one inning in a brutal response to the White Sox who had dared to score eight runs against them in the top half of the same inning. That’s the way to put a team in their place!

A starter’s dream – The Yankees don’t have a monopoly on big-scoring innings though. The Padres gave their starter, Tim Stauffer, a dream start last Sunday by handing him an 11-0 lead as he took the mound in the bottom of the first. He didn’t make the most of it though, giving up seven runs in 3.2 innings himself before getting the hook. The Padres eventually ran out winners in an 18-11 game.

When pitchers pinch-hit – That first inning assault by the Padres was just the latest disaster in Jason Jennings’ season. After moving from the Rockies to spend his walk year with the Astros, Jennings has probably pitched his way out of a very lucrative free agent contract by compiling a 2-7 record from fifteen starts (coupled by a 6.11 ERA). However, he managed to help the Astros win a game on Thursday with his bat. With their game against the Braves reaching the fourteenth inning, manager Phil Garner had no other option but to bring Jennings into the game as a very unorthodox pinch-hitter. Jennings laced a single to score Jason Lane in what turned out to be the game-winning run.

Lannan and the Nats – John Lannan’s eventful Major League debut was highlighted in WHGB last week and he gets a mention this week for bouncing back and earning his first Major League win on Wednesday against the Reds. Don’t look now, but the Nats are really playing well at the moment. Shame they’ve also recently handcuffed themselves by extending the contracts of a couple of average veterans (Young and Belliard) rather than dealing them for something better at the deadline.

New boys doing well – Ah yes, the trading deadline. So many rumours, so much promise, and so little action. A few players have found themselves wearing new uniforms this week though and most have got off to a good start in their new surroundings. Mark Teixeira was the biggest name to move on deadline day and he has already endeared himself to fans in Atlanta by going deep in each of his first three games. Wilson Betemit hit a homer in his first at-bat for the Yankees as well. Meanwhile, the Padres raided the bargain bins to find a few cheap hitters to bring their offense back to life. Morgan Ensberg, who was unceremoniously dumped by the Astros, hit two home runs on Thursday and then the newly acquired Scott Hairston hit two on Friday, including a walk-off shot to win a game against the Giants. Meanwhile, the Phillies picked up Kyle Lohse on Monday and then had to take him out of his first start on Thursday after one inning due to injury. It sums up the Phillies’ luck this season with their pitching staff. As Lohse put it himself at MLB.com, “I thought I’d try to fit in”!

The amazing, performance-enhanced Perez – Lohse’s injury was only minor and he doesn’t expect to miss his next start, but Neifi Perez will not take the field again this season and there has to be a question over whether he will ever make it back to the Majors. The light-hitting Perez was handed an eighty-game suspension for failing a drugs test for the third time. The ban started yesterday, the first day after his previous twenty-five game ban had come to an end. The idea that Perez was taking performance enhancing drugs can’t help but raise a smirk, although he is unlikely to be laughing as around $1.25 million of his salary has just gone down the pan.

Welcome to the Hall of Fame – Finally we look back on how the week started, with Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken Jr being inducted into the Hall of Fame. Estimates put the crowd at around 75,000, the largest ever crowd to attend the event, and it was really no surprise. Gwynn and Ripken were basically everything you could want from a ballplayer: great on the field, even greater off it. Many sports stars, with their egos inflated by the esteem they are held in for their on-field abilities, seem to be devoid of any concept of responsibility or humility. These two legends have always been exceptions to that rule and they both used their induction speeches to preach the virtues of hard work. It’s difficult to imagine two better role models and they truly deserved their big day.

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