A Vatican soccer tournament began in Rome today.
ROME – The fans were pious. The players bound for glory. And the victory? A miracle. Priests and seminarians from several soccer-loving countries took to a field near the looming dome of St. Peter’s Basilica Saturday for the first match of the Clericus Cup, a tournament fielding 16 teams from Catholic institutes in Rome.
“You are playing in view of St. Peter’s cupola, so behave well,” admonished Cardinal Pio Laghi before giving the official kickoff at a small arena on a hill overlooking the Vatican.
In Italy soccer is a hallowed game, taken almost as seriously as Catholicism, and the players were all business once the whistle was blown.
Amid screams from the coaches, pious slogans from the small crowd and T-shirts invoking the protection of the Virgin Mary, a motley crew of Latin Americans, Africans and Asians from the Collegio Mater Ecclesiae (Mother of the Church College) took on an all-Brazilian team fielded by the Gregorian University.
In a miraculous upset, the young Mater Ecclesiae players trounced the more experienced but portly Brazilians 6-0 as their fans chanted: “The Mother of the Church wants a goal!”
Yes but whose team is the Holy Mother a fan of?
Kind of reminds me of the commercial five years ago. A father and his young son watching football and whenever one team scored a touchdown the boy would yell “Touchdown” while raising his arms in the air. Unfortunately the game wasn’t going well for Dad’s team.
That commercial(I don’t remember who the sponsor was) was seen frequently during the 2002 football season. It sticks in my memory and that of my wife who at the time was pregnant with our son Daniel. I wish Daniel was here to watch television with me now rather than me whittling away a Saturday doing nothing in particular.
Cross Posted to The Florida Masochist and Poliblog’s Deportes
Previous Installments: C – 1B/DH – 2B/SS – 3B – OF – SP
And here we are. The end of the line for the Kansas City Royals Spring Training Preview series. It’s fitting, then, that today we look at the men who will be tasked with finishing the games.
Last year, the Royals were abysmal in the final innings.
Rk Tm Save%
1 MIN 80.00
2 LAD 79.37
3 DET 74.19
League 65.88
29 KC 53.03
30 CLE 51.06
Kansas City blew 31 saves in 2006, more than any other team in baseball.
If the team had been able to convert saves at the league average rate, they would have added another eight wins, and while that still would have left them well out of the playoff chase, it would also have kept every single team preview this year from leading off with the “KC has lost 100 games or more in four of the last five years†stat.
Granted, it’s a moral victory, but one worth achieving.
Since these guys don’t play as many innings in a game (and since there are so damn many of them), they get shorter player profiles.
Octavio Dotel
0-0, 10.80, 2.90
ERA+ 41
Don’t let the stat line scare you. Those numbers were compiled over just ten innings last season. Dotel has only thrown 25.3 innings in the major leagues the last two seasons due to injury (that is the stat that should scare you).
Throwing out last year, Dotel hasn’t had an ERA+ lower than 123 since 2000. If he’s truly mended, he should be a stable force at the end of ball games this year.
Todd Wellemeyer
1-4, 4.14, 1.51
ERA+ 114
Wellemeyer put up a 3.63 ERA in 57 innings after the Royals picked him up off of waivers last year. He’s always had strong strike-out-to-walk ratios in the minors, but that has yet to translate to the major league level.
If he can give away a few less free passes this season, he will have been a steal for Dayton Moore.
Joakim Soria
n/a
After the Royals made Soria the second pick in the Rule V draft this off season, he responded by pitching a perfect game in the Mexican Pacific League.
Solid stats are hard to come by for Soria, who has spent most of his time on the disabled list or pitching in the MPL, but according to this Wikipedia entry, he was 9-0 with a 1.77 ERA in 11 starts last season, striking out over a man an inning.
Jimmy Gobble
4-6, 5.14, 1.48
ERA+ 94
Gobble has always been a finesse pitcher with decent control. Last year, he led the team in strikeouts, a stat that probably says more about the Royals than himself.
He also led the team in wild fluctuations in performance month to month.
Mth G ERA
Apr 10 6.75
May 9 3.00
Jun 12 2.25
Jul 5 6.85 (5 starts)
Aug 12 1.64
Sep 12 12.00
Only turning 25 this season, Gobble still has a chance to decide who he wants to be… the ace from August, or the September schmuck.
Joel Peralta
1-3, 4.40, 1.24
ERA+ 110
Peralta spent a long time in the Angels farm system, putting up good K/BB ratios and decent ERAs. Unfortunately for him, the Angels have been loaded with talent in their relief corps, so he was waived and picked up by the Royals.
He was solid if unspectacular with the team last year and is one of many arms that will have a shot at a set up role going into this season.
Ryan Braun
0-1, 6.75, 1.50
ERA+ 72
A high strike out guy, Braun was moving up through the Royals farm system nicely until he lost 2005 to injury. Last season, he put up ERAs of 2.21 in AA and 2.16 in AAA.
The numbers above are from his cup of coffee call up in September last year and are skewed by a particularly bad outing against Detroit.
Ken Ray
1-1, 4.52, 1.54
ERA+ 97
Does that name sound familiar, Royals fans? It’s because Ray pitched 11.3 innings for the team in 1999.
Since that time, he’s bounced around the minors as organizational filler for the Giants, Brewers, White Sox and Braves.
Dayton Moore has brought him to Kansas City because he saw something he liked in Ray while he was with the Atlanta organization.
Leo Nunez
0-0, 4.72, 1.50
ERA+ 102
Nunez was jumped from AA to the big league club in 2005 after showing a few flashes of brilliance for the Wichita Wranglers. Those flashes turned out to be the “in a pan†kind and he struggled with the Royals that year.
Last season, he came up briefly in the summer, posted some promising stats, and spent the rest of the year progressing from AA to AAA, where he posted a 2.13 ERA in 38 innings with Omaha.
Turning 24 this season, Nunez still has a chance to grow into a fine MLB pitcher.
John Bale
n/a
A solid pitcher in the minors for several organizations, Bale could never make his big league opportunities stick and wound up pitching in Japan the past three years.
His walk rates have been declining along with his ERAs while in Japan, so he may have finally figured something out in the Far East.
David Riske
1-2, 3.89, 1.30
ERA+ 120
A solid relief pitcher, Riske was signed in the off season to give the Royals at least two guys in the bullpen with proven major league success (Dotel being the other).
He pitched 3.7 innings of scoreless baseball in the 2001 postseason while with Cleveland, so he’s got way better clutch stats than A-Rod if the team can make it past the regular season.
Joe Nelson
1-1, 4.43, 1.37
ERA+ 109
Another one of those guys who was on track to become an MLB regular until injuries derailed him in 2000 and 2003.
Last year was the first time Nelson saw sufficient action at the major league level. After a strong start to the season (1.11 ERA in his first 22 games), he tired towards the end of the year, posting an ERA of 8.41 in his last 21 appearances.
The feast or famine nature of Nelson’s season pretty much sums up the entire Royals squad going into camp this year. Every player on the roster has had moments in their career in which they looked like a superstar on the verge of breaking out, and most of them have had soul-crushing reality checks.
Over the next month and a half, Buddy Bell and his staff will need to do their best at sorting out the true talents of each player and assembling a team that can produce results, not just hope for them.
He was a part of three NBA Championship teams I remember Johnson when he played for the Celtics. The mid-eighties being about the only time I followed basketball. After his playing days were over, Johnson was an NBA assistant coach and for 24 games the head coach of the Los Angeles Clippers. RIP Dennis.
AP- AUSTIN, Texas – Dennis Johnson, the star NBA guard who was part of three championship teams, died Thursday at 52. “He is deceased and is in our building. He will be autopsied,” said Mayra Freeman, a spokeswoman for the Travis County medical examiner’s office.
Johnson, a five-time All-Star and one of the great defensive guards, played on title teams with the Boston Celtics and Seattle SuperSonics. He had been coaching the Austin Toros of the NBA Development League.
Johnson played 14 seasons, retiring after the 1989-90 season. He was the NBA Finals MVP in 1979 with Seattle, with his other titles coming with Boston in 1984 and 1986.
He averaged 14.1 points and 5.0 assists. When he retired, he was the 11th player in NBA history to total 15,000 points and 5,000 assists. Johnson made one all-NBA first team and one second team. Six times he made the all-defensive first team, including five consecutive seasons from 1979-83.
Johnson was born Sept. 18, 1954, in Compton, Calif. He played in college at Pepperdine and was drafted by Seattle in 1976. Johnson was traded to Phoenix in 1980 and Boston in 1983.
Fantastic news for Kansas City Royals fans today: Denny Matthews has been announced as the winner of the Ford C. Frick Award by the Baseball Hall of Fame.
From the Royals website:
Matthews has been with the Royals since the franchise’s inception as an American League expansion team in 1969. He initially won the job after beating out more than 250 applicants for the No. 2 announcing position alongside veteran Bud Blattner.
I first started listening to Matthews calling Royals games when I was mowing the lawn as a kid. When I moved to Los Angeles seven years ago, I began listening to the Royals games over the internet and really discovered what a great play by play man he is.
Here are my two favorite Denny moments:
1.) During a Royals-Rangers game, the announcers were discussing Nolan Ryan and his accomplishments as a player. They talked about the strike outs and the no hitters and then Matthews finally chimed in that his favorite moment was when Robin Ventura charged the mound and Ryan put him in a headlock and basically showed him who the boss was.
Matthews doesn’t sugar coat things. That’s everybody’s favorite memory of Nolan Ryan and he didn’t pretend otherwise.
2.) During the magical run towards respectability in 2003, the Royals were about to lose to the Seattle Mariners in the second game since coming back from the All Star Break. Mike MacDougal had come in to save a 3-1 lead in the ninth inning, but walked a few batters, gave up a few singles and was facing Ichiro Suzuki with the bases loaded.
Ichiro drove the ball to right field and Matthews started yelling, “Come on wind! Come on wind!”
It was a grand slam and the Royals lost the game.
Matthews is most often criticized for not showing enough emotion during a game. To me, this is his greatest quality. Routine grounders are treated like routine grounders. Likewise with lazy fly balls and singles over the second base bag.
When it really counts, Denny’s voice will rise, and he will shout at the wind to help his team win, just like a great flagship announcer should.
Congratulations, Denny. You belong in Cooperstown.
The struggles of the defending NBA Champ Miami Heat continue.
HOUSTON (Reuters) – Miami Heat All-Star guard Dwyane Wade is out of action indefinitely after suffering a shoulder injury during Wednesday night’s loss to the Houston Rockets.
The game, won by the Rockets 112-102, marked an ominous return to the bench for Heat coach Pat Riley, who missed the team’s last 22 games to address his own knee and hip injuries.
He said the “other guys will have to step up” following Wade’s injury, initially diagnosed as a separated shoulder.
“We will have to emphasize a whole different game because he means so much to us,” Riley told reporters. “Over the next couple of days we’ll find out the extent of his injury and then we’ll go to the drawing board on what we’ll have to do.”
Wade scored 27 points and had nine assists before being forced from the game. The twice All-Star is averaging nearly 29 points and eight assists a game for the defending NBA champions.
With Wade out, Shaq barely back from his injuries, and the Heat standing at 26-27, is Pat Riley already reconsidering his return to coaching the team? Maybe he’ll give the job back to Stan Van Gundy, who made a rare appearance recently but with the wrong South Florida sports team. Yes Van Gundy will replace Riley as Heat coach the same day The Palm Beach Post hires me to write a sports column.
I’m sticking by my New Year’s prediction- The Heat will not make the postseason this year.
Cross posted to Poliblog’s Deportes
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| Thursday, February 22, 2007 |
He just can’t get over them letting him go. Let’s go to the quoted text:
Damon, now in his second spring with the Yankees, believes the Red Sox had the money to sign him, they just decided he wasn’t worth it.
“I knew they had the money back when they were negotiating with me; they just took their stance,” Damon said. “I was probably the only guy who never begged them to sign me.”
In Damon’s mind, he had done everything possible to earn a new deal from the Red Sox, who offered him four years and $40 million. If they didn’t want to give him one, he would find what he wanted elsewhere.
That it was the Yankees who gave it to him was simply a bonus.
“They had a chance for a month and a half after the season, but when they don’t talk to you or offer you a contract in that time, it tells you they don’t want you,” Damon said. “That’s fine with me. I wasn’t going to be in a situation where they didn’t want me. I think they just looked at it as, ‘Johnny loves it here.’ It was great, but this suits me a lot better. I’m a happier person because of it.”
Damon was offered a deal by the Red Sox, which he rejected, because he felt the offer was lacking. Rather than moving on from the split, he continues to talk about how he was surprised that they wouldn’t up their offer to keep him, Johnny Damon. Why he continues to discuss a year old deal mystifies, and while the Yankees did get the better of the deal last year, how does it strike Yankee fans that the team’s starting centerfielder is pining for his old club and unable to get over their decision to move on?
