Former MLB pitcher Steve Ridzik dead at 78

A journeyman pitcher with a career record of 39-38, his career spanned sixteen years, with a 6 year span in the middle where Ridzik pitched 29 innings or less of ML ball or was out of the league entirely. He was a VERY small part of the 1950 pennant winning Philadelphia Phillies known aka The Whiz Kids. Being a fan and player of Strat-O-Matic’s past seasons, I was somewhat familiar with Ridzik’s accomplishments. RIP

BRADENTON — Former professional baseball player Steve Ridzik never forgot the fans who helped him fulfill his dream for more than a decade.

The former pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies, the New York Giants and several other teams, who died Jan. 8 of heart disease at 78, helped create a players’ alumni association that raises money for charity.

Ridzik helped organize a Bradenton golf tournament with former baseball players that raised more than $50,000 for Manatee Memorial Hospital in the early 1990s, said his wife, Nancy Ridzik of Bradenton. The ex-ballplayer had undergone open-heart surgery there for a triple bypass a couple of years earlier, she said.

In addition to taking part in several other fundraisers over the years, Ridzik also regularly granted fans’ requests for autographs by signing baseball cards and blank cards that arrived by mail on almost a daily basis, his wife said.

“We’ve even had baseball bats and baseballs sent here” and he obliged, she said.

Born April 29, 1929, in Yonkers, N.Y., Ridzik was signed by the Phillies’ in 1945 at age 16 and pitched his first major league game in 1950, the same year the Phillies went on to win the National League pennant for the first time in 35 years.

Nicknamed “The Whiz Kids” that year because their average age was 26, the Phillies were the youngest team to ever reach the World Series, which they lost to the New York Yankees.

Ridzik subsequently played for the Cincinnati Redlegs, the Giants, the Cleveland Indians and the Washington Senators before retiring from baseball in 1966. He later worked for a food distributor in the Washington, D.C., area before retiring and moving to Bradenton in 1988.

He helped former Senators teammate Chuck Hinton establish the nonprofit Major League Baseball Players Alumni Association in 1982 for former players to serve as goodwill ambassadors of the sport.

Ridzik returned to Philadelphia in 2000 for a 50th anniversary reunion of his pennant-winning team before a crowd of 40,000 in Veterans Stadium.

“He wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” his wife said. “I think there were 13 of the original ‘Whiz Kids’ still around back then, and now there are only about six left.”

In retirement, he enjoyed golfing and watching horse and dog racing.

Former MLB player David Segui admits to steroid use

I wonder if any other retired players will come forward with the Mitchell report out due soon. From AP-

BALTIMORE – Retired first baseman David Segui admitted Monday that he used steroids and purchased shipments from former New York Mets clubhouse attendant Kirk Radomski, The Sun reported on its Web site Monday night.

Segui also repeated his June 2006 admission to ESPN that he used human growth hormone with a prescription.

He told the newspaper that he refused to talk to former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, whose report on performance-enhancing drugs is expected soon. Segui said he didn’t want to betray the trust of other players.

*****

Radomski pleaded guilty in April to federal charges of illegally distributing performance-enhancing drugs. As part of his agreement with the government, he was required to cooperate with Mitchell’s investigation.

Segui said he met Radomski after being traded to the Mets in 1994. They became close and still talk by phone several times a week — usually about fishing and family.

I remember Segui from my Star Tournament days. A slick fielding 1st baseman who didn’t have the power most players at that position possessed. A check of Segui’s career stats confirms it, his career high was 21 homers in 1997.

So all that HGH and steroid taking didn’t produce much for Segui. One day when feeling ill for some unknown reason, will he make a link to his foolish drug use years earlier? He was dumb to the stuff, one assumes his intelligence hasn’t all that much since his retirement.

Cleveland Indian pitcher Juan Lara seriously injured in auto accident

The twenty-six-year-old spent most of last season in the minor leagues. From AP-

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Cleveland Indians pitcher Juan Lara was seriously hurt in a car accident after a Winter League game this weekend in the Dominican Republic, a spokesman for the American League team told baseball Web site www.mlb.com.

Two people died in the accident Saturday night, and Lara was taken to a Dominican hospital for treatment, according to Indians spokesman Bart Swain.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper quoted an unnamed team spokesman as saying Lara suffered “life-threatening injuries.”

Left-handed reliever Lara was stopped in his car at an intersection in San Pedro de Macoris shortly after his Winter League game for Estrellas when a motorcycle slammed into the vehicle, Swain said.

The two people riding the motorcycle were killed.

Cardinal pitcher Josh Hancock was the last active MLB player to be killed in an auto accident. Lets pray Lara recovers from the crash.

The John Hart Post-season

If someone would ask who is the most influential general manager in baseball today, many people would answer, Billy Beane of the Oakland Athletics. Beane, the one-time prospect, was the first general manager to put the ideas of Bill James to practical use. By using metrics that other organizations ignored, Beane built a team that has been competitive over the past decade despite operating with one of the smallest budgets in the game. Now more teams are using statistical analysis to evaluate their talent, but Beane was the first to do it. (At least this time around. Other teams did it in the past, but there wasn’t a fancy name like Sabermetrics to describe it then.) And Beane had a book written about him. How much more influential can he be?

It’s possible though, that Beane isn’t the answer. In fact an argument could be made that the most influential GM in baseball isn’t even a GM anymore.

John Hart now a special assistant to owner Tom Hicks of the Texas Rangers may have transformed the game even more than Beane has. In fact, it’s the change that Hart introduced that has helped make statistical analysis more accepted throughout the game.

Hart did set an example in the early 90′s as he brought the Cleveland Indians back to respectability and the World Series (twice). He signed his young talent to multi-year contracts before they reached arbitration. He figured that if he locked up players early, he might spend more at the beginning of the deal but spend a lot less than he otherwise would have at the end of the deal.

Back in the day when teams controlled the players (and salaries) Branch Rickey famously said “Trade a player a year too early rather than a year too late.”

For baseball, things have changed a lot economically in the past half century. Given the popularity of the sport, the free movement that players have achieved and the resulting rising salaries, identifying, signing, developing and keeping talent is the toughest challenge of every major league team. But what Branch Rickey describes that challenge.

What John Hart did in Cleveland was introduce a way to meet that challenge. But what he did behind the scenes was even more interesting.

At the time of the championship series this year, Jerry Crasnick of ESPN wrote John Hart’s family tree.

Excuse Hart if he feels as if his professional life is flashing before his eyes.

His former right-hand man, Dan O’Dowd, is riding a late-season wave with the resurgent Rockies. But first Colorado must get past the Arizona Diamondbacks, who are run by Josh Byrnes, a former front-office assistant in Cleveland at the height of Hart’s regime.

And the Cleveland Indians, the franchise Hart guided to six postseason berths and two World Series appearances from 1995 through 2001, will try to end 59 years of championship futility against Boston. General manager Mark Shapiro, yet another Hart protégé, is the man in charge in Cleveland.

That means three of the four general managers still playing consider Hart a mentor and lifelong influence. Which makes you wonder: How did he miss Theo Epstein?

How’d he develop all of this front office talent?

The John Hart front-office “tree” encompasses more than the three LCS general managers. Neal Huntington, the new GM in Pittsburgh, spent nine years in Cleveland. Paul DePodesta worked for the Indians before moving on to Oakland, the Dodgers and San Diego. And Chris Antonetti, Shapiro’s top assistant, is widely regarded as a GM-in-waiting.

Shapiro has a history degree from Princeton, Byrnes went to Haverford, Huntington is an Amherst graduate and DePodesta went to Harvard. Those academic pedigrees might seem a little highfalutin for the old guard, but Hart found a way to marry the two approaches in Cleveland. Nothing got done until John Goryl, Tom Giordano and the veteran baseball men had their say.

“This isn’t Sabermetrics,” Hart said. “I wanted our guys to hear what the manager says and how tough it is in that dugout, because I’ve been there. I wanted them to respect the old scout in the blue Plymouth who’s going from one city to the next trying to find the next young superstar out of high school or college. They all got schooled on old baseball.”

Antonetti was widely regarded as a future GM someplace else. His name came up as a possibility in St. Louis but Cleveland offered him a deal to stay in place. but look at the academic backgrounds of the men listed above. It appears that John Hart’s innovation to the front office was to introduce the interdisciplinary approach to running a baseball team.

There are still those who deride the statistical approach to baseball. But what Hart showed was that different approaches could be melded together to run a baseball team successfully.

Rob Neyer, in a similar article, four years ago had Hart describe his philosophy.

“My background was field development,” Hart recalls. “But as I noticed the evolvement of the game, I realized that while there were a lot of strengths I was going to bring, if we wanted to have the best organization, we needed to have people around that offered another skill set. When you’re in that position, you worry. You want to be good. And at some point I said to myself, ‘Here’s where we want to be. And if we want to get here, this is what I need. I can’t do this by myself.’ ”

As the new general manager, one of Hart’s first hires was Shapiro. “I knew that Mark had great leadership skills,” says Hart, “in addition to being a Princeton graduate and very bright. But what I wanted to do with Mark was get him to where he was in a leadership position, to where he could go lead a farm department. And the great thing was to get him around the baseball people, the guys that had made a living in the game for so long, the Johnny Goryls and the other 40-year guys. Mark picked it up. He just got it, and the baseball guys established a great confidence in Mark.”

But Crasnick didn’t give Hart enough credit. Hart’s model may well have been copied by the Boston Red Sox. No Theo Epstein didn’t serve under Hart, but he apparently learned quite well from him.

One majored in history at Wesleyan University. One studied psychology at Harvard. One pursued American studies at Colby College. One elected Russian studies and political science, also at Colby.

One managed two hits off future Anaheim Angel Jarrod Washburn as a sophomore at Wesleyan. One had a .301 career average for the Crimson. One began at Colby as an “OK field, no hit” infielder, took up pitching, and won nine games. One tried out for the varsity at Weymouth South High as a junior and was told “I’d made the team, but that I was never going to play.”

One grew up in Plymouth, N.H., one in Swampscott, one in Walpole, N.H., the other in Weymouth, all fans of the Boston Red Sox.

Today, they constitute much of the organization’s underpinning, literally and figuratively. Literally, they are based underground, below the Fenway Park box office at the corner of Brookline Avenue and Yawkey Way. Figuratively, they get the necessary and complex work — contracts, arbitration casework, player recruitment, advance scouting, and more — done.

But there was another way that John Hart influenced the Red Sox this year. Not in the front office but on the bench.

When he was a younger manager with the Phillies, Francona did little to distinguish himself. In four years on the job, Francona never managed more than 77 wins in a season, and by the end of his tenure he’d lost control of the team. There were also concerns that Francona overused his young pitchers in the service of, well, not much of anything. After the smoke cleared, it appeared that Francona had squandered his opportunity.

However, he then spent time in the Cleveland Indians front office and as the bench coach for the Texas Rangers and Oakland A’s. In those roles, Francona learned new approaches to the game — namely, the value of statistical analysis when it comes to making baseball decisions. Certainly, Francona never abandoned his traditionalist bearing, but his time in progressive organizations like Cleveland and Oakland helped him learn to blend approaches. That rare skill impressed the new regime in Boston when they interviewed Francona for their vacant managerial post.

At the time of his hiring, Francona’s managerial record was pocked with failure, and he was viewed by fans and media as an uninspired choice; you may recall a similar reaction when Torre was named Yankees manager. Of course, Francona promptly proved them all wrong.

Dayn Perry, who wrote the article, also noticed what I did: the similarity of the Francona signing with the Red Sox to the Torre signing by the Yankees. Each came in with a less than impressive managing career, but both emerged as top managers. Francona, was prepared for his new position, in part, by learning the Hart approach to baseball.

Baseball Musings noted something about Francona right after he was hired.

I always thought this was Buck Showalter’s strength with the Yankees, using players in situations in which there was a high probability of them succeeding. If that’s Terry’s philosophy as well, he’ll do well with the Red Sox.

So it can reasonably be argued that John Hart’s influence extended to all four teams to reach the championship series this year. And with another Hart protege now running the show in Pittsburgh the interdisciplinary approach to running a ballclub continues to spread.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Thoughts from a Sports Guy Reader

This was an e-mail I sent in to Bill Simmons (the very funny and actually intelligent sportswriter known as the “Sports Guy”) at 3:45am after reading his latest column… I decided it was good enough to post.

I’m an Indians fan currently living in NYC (yes, the ALDS rocked), and I thought you’d enjoy a few tidbits from the Indians’ announcers and an Indians fan in light of your latest article.

• 1) Tom Hamilton announced as Blood Pressure Borowski came in that “Indians fans might be shocked to learn that he had more 1-2-3 innings this year than Mariano Rivera.” My brother called me up to tell me this and say “Yep, I was shocked.”
• 2) Every ex-Clevelander I know has come up to me this postseason and said “You know, this year feels different. I’m not waiting for something horrible to happen that ends it all… I feel like they actually might win!” I’m sure that until 2004, you could appreciate that one.
• 3) Then again, as I listened online to Game 2, when Youkilis hit that liner on the 11th pitch in the bottom of the 9th, I almost had a heart attack. (I’m 24.) Within 60 seconds of that moment, I’d spoken to my brother in NY, my sister in Baltimore, and my father in Cleveland. And amazingly, we’d all survived.
• 3a) Indians’ announcer Hamilton about 2 seconds after pausing after that catch said “Cleveland, you can breathe again.”
• 3b) I hadn’t been breathing.
• 4) You haven’t seen enough Browns games. That’s the only way you can think that Indians’ fans won’t stay loud in the freezing cold. I’ve been to subzero Browns games at the end of the year when they’re WAY out of it, and you’d think they were still in the playoff hunt. 40 degrees?! That’s like a sauna to Cleveland fans.
• 4a) The Indians’ announcers in Game 2 noted in about the 4th or 5th inning that the Sox fans didn’t seem as loud as the Indians or Yankees fans had been in the first series. It could be because it’s a smaller park, but Hegan thought that they seemed like they were waiting for the World Series to get really into it.
• 4b) As a total throw-in, Bill Belichik is an *******. He completely sucked when he coached the Browns, and while he’s not at Jordan/Elway/Modell/Jose Mesa/Steelers level of hatred in Cleveland, that’s only because everyone thought he was too boring to listen to to even hate.
• 4b2) I think the only reason Romeo Crennel didn’t get fired as the Browns’ head coach after Week 1 is because people are afraid he’ll be the next Belichik: Supposed defensive genius, clueless-looking head coach, sounds like he’s going through the motions in press conferences, never looks like he cares about anything, spends a couple of years squandering great offensive talents (Kosar/Metcalf; Winslow/Edwards), brings in semi-washed up but decent LBs from his old team (Pepper Johnson;Willie McGinest)… it would be typical Browns to let him go and then watch as he somehow turns up in 7 years in his 2nd Super Bowl, citing what he “learned” in those “hard times” as a Browns head coach.
• 5) Whenever Joe Borowski enters a game, I have terrible Jose Mesa flashbacks, thinking “NO! Leave in Mike Jackson!!” (Betancourt)
• 6) You know that if the Indians keep winning these games, there’s a strong possibility there will be no good ALCS MVP choice. If Borowski has 4 scoreless innings and 3 saves, would it not be the funniest thing ever if he’s standing up there, receiving the award? Wouldn’t you (in between tears and yelling) crack up at your TV screen? This could really happen.

Wang sucks (again), ends Yanks season

That’s why baseball needs a first round ‘best of seven’ series. Cleveland was a little better during this four game stretch, but I still think the Yanks were the better overall team (best record in the second half anyone?).

The sad thing is that we would have given Boston much more of a run for their money. Cleveland is highly unlikely to continue their insane hitting with runners in scoring position while the Yanks would be unlikely to continue their woeful RISP hitting. After all, during the 162 game regular season the Yankees OPS with RISP was .829 compared to Cleveland’s .743. Boston must be ecstatic to face the Tribe (5-2 in 2007) instead of us who went 10-8 against them.

I won’t kill Torre for deciding to start Wang over Moose because I agreed with it for several reasons: 1) Wang pitches much better at home, 2) short rest can be a blessing for a sinkerballer who tries to keep the ball down, 3) he only threw 94 pitches in Game 1, 4) I just didn’t trust Mussina. He sucked though and was one of the main culprits behind the series loss: 5.2 ip, 19.06 era. When your ‘ace’ gets shelled like that it’ll be tough to win any series – throw in the poor hitting (Jeter hit .176, Posada .133, Matsui .182, Melky .188) and that’s the series.

The bad news:
1. Obviously, the season’s over and the guys deserved a better ending.
2. At least a month of speculation about Mo, Pettitte and Jorge… oh wait, and a guy named Alex.
3. Boston has a better chance to win the LCS.
4. If they do win the series, I’ll have to listen to a lot of shit from my New England relatives at Thanksgiving.

The good news:
1. A far less stressful October from this point on.
2. Guys like Joba, Phil and Shelley got valuable postseason experience (and showed they could succeed) which should help them next year.
3. The possibility of bringing in a new manager. I like Joe but as some of the postgame guys said, the players have to raise their intensity level in the playoffs and it seemed like they were simply duplicating their regular season approach.
4. Their resiliency – this team seemed dead in late May (I was 80% sure they’d miss the playoffs) only for them to turn around the season and nearly clinch the best record in baseball.
4. Four months until pitchers and catchers report.

How Manny became a Jedi

The ALCS will pit the Boston Red Sox against the Cleveland Indians for the honor of facing the National League Champion. Or Manny Ramirez’s current team vs. his first team.

Manny Ramirez, 16 years ago, was quite a sensation at the high school level (he played for George Washington High School in Washington Heights)and the New York Times gave him quite a bit of coverage as he was a highly regarded prospect. I suppose there was some hope he might get drafted by the Yankees and play just a few miles from his home.

Manny Ramirez, who plays center field and third base, batted .633 last season and is rated the best high school player in the city and one of the best in the country (he made USA Today’s top 25), will hit balls out of the park. He hit 16 homers last season.

His teammates say they admire Manny, the son of a cab driver, for not acting cocky. But he would like to be identified in the newspaper as the Hitman. The big-league scouts are following the Hitman; so is Washington Heights. Even the neighborhood’s greatest baseball success story — a Panamanian immigrant named Rod Carew who graduated from Washington in 1964 and was recently elected to the Hall of Fame — says he has heard of Manny Ramirez’s bat.

But the coverage continued even after he was drafted by Cleveland.

In many ways, Ramirez hasn’t left Washington Heights, the upper Manhattan neighborhood of Dominican immigrants where he rose from the Alexis Ferreira Little League to become a local hero as the star third baseman on the George Washington High School team. Last spring, with a .650 average and 14 home runs in 22 games, he was the best high school ballplayer in New York City.

Now, as the No. 1 draft pick of the Cleveland Indians, he has shown similar strengths in the Appalachian League. Batting third in the lineup, he leads the rookie league in home runs, with 14 in 49 games — including two grand slams in one week — and in runs batted in with 52.

But while the center fielder with the quicksilver swing feels at home within the confines of Burlington Athletic Stadium, the shy teen-ager from teeming, close-knit Washington Heights feels marooned here, in small-town America.

(Realizing that Manny was special, the Times followed the George Washington High School baseball team during his senior year as well as his development through the Indians’ organization.)

Manny was one of the centerpieces of a revitalized Cleveland Indians organization that was rebuilt through drafting excellent young players and retaining them. Under John Hart the team developed stars such as Ramirez, Albert Belle, Jim Thome, and Carlos Baerga, reaching the World Series twice (once in 1995 and once in 1997).

In the winter of 2000, Ramirez was lured to the Boston Red Sox as a free agent where he would become their new star. Cleveland was in decline and would start a new rebuilding era under John Hart’s successor, Mark Shapiro, which has now led the Indians back to the postseason.

Ramirez helped the Red Sox win their first World Championship in nearly a century in 2004 and, this year, to their first first place finish in nearly 20 years this year. Ramirez has been regarded as something of a flaky fellow. It was perhaps because of this perception that Boston was prepared to trade him for Alex Rodriguez prior to the 2003 season. (He still had a lot fans among his former teammates.)

By now Manny Ramirez is a great ballplayer and he’s reaching the age where a player’s skills often decline. So how does he retain his skills? Rob Bradford of Boston Herald uncovered some of his preparation in Manny has Plan.

The media, whose job it is to uncover every nook and cranny concerning each player’s makeup, is left living in the world of the fans for whom they write. This is the mystery of Manny, by all accounts one of the smartest, best-prepared hitters in the history of the game.

Few people know about the extra hand-eye coordination exercises Ramirez has added to his routine since the middle of the 2004 season. Strength and conditioning coach Dave Page fires golf ball-like spheres at the slugger’s strike zone, where they are caught by Ramirez’ right hand, acting as a bat.

Later in the workout, which is done 30 minutes before every game, Page throws four rings at Ramirez. Each ring has a different colored ball attached to it, and Page calls out the color of the ball Manny has to grab out of mid-air.

One of the toughest aspects of hitting is deciding what pitch is coming at you in a fraction of a second. So in order to maintain his skill Manny spends extra time honing that decision making. (It reminded me of Obi-Wan training Luke, without the blindfold.) It may very well be that at the end of next year, when his current contract expires, that Manny will once again be highly sought after. If so, it will be a testament, to his dedication to his job.

Friday night, the team that drafted the promising 19 year old will face the team that signed their star away. It will be the battle of Manny’s teams.

Crossposted at Soccer Dad.

Hughes saves Yankees season

Phil Hughes saved the game and season tonight (for at least another 24 hours). Roger Clemens failed to get through three (with a bad hammy) so on came Phil who shut down Cleveland’s offense for 3.2 innings. How ironic that the guy that nicknamed ‘Little Rocket’ picked up the ‘Big Rocket’ in possibly his last game ever? He became the youngest pitcher to ever win a playoff game for the Yankees.

Arod had his first hit(s) of the postseason, as did Posada and Matsui, but the big blow came off the bat of Johnny Damon who delivered a 3-run HR that gave the Yanks a 5-3 lead. Later on Robbie Cano ripped a bases loaded single to right that Trot Nixon misplayed into a bases-clearing triple. That pretty much sealed the win.

I didn’t get to see much of Friday night’s bug-fest (I was out of town) – but I know Melky was the entire Yankee offense and even threw out a runner at home; and as the Yanks were clinging to a 1-0 lead, bugs descended into Jacobs Field causing Joba to uncork two wild pitches that allowed Cleveland to tie the game. In the 11th, Vizcaino sucked and Hafner ripped a 2-out bases loaded single to win the game…

Anyway, now that this is a series (literally, every other LDS ended in a sweep), the Yanks get to face Paul Byrd tomorrow who was shelled in his last start against them. Wang will start on three days of rest (good for a sinkerballer) at home with Mussina waiting in the wings, so this game looks to be in New York’s favor. A win tomorrow means Pettitte in Game 5 in Cleveland…

Yanks lose – it sure looks like Torre was wrong

to start Wang in Game 1 and start Matsui over Duncan. Like I said, it should have been Pettitte in Game 1, Hughes in Game 2, Wang in Game 3. Someone on some website said that of all the Game 1 starters in the playoffs this year, the one most likely to get shelled was Wang – and he was right. He had two outs and none on in the 1st before allowing three runs! WTF? Then there was Posada k’ing with the bases full and none out. After the Yanks pulled to within one, and Wang walked the leadoff hitter, I knew Torre should have pulled him, but no, he stayed in to give up a two-run HR that felt like the death knell.

What else went wrong? Outside of Ohlendorf getting bombed, Melky has become an automatic out (0-4), Arod walked twice but also went 0-2 with two popups, Posada, Matsui and Jeter went 0-12 with five Ks (leaving 12 men on base).

The good news? Abreu and Cano looked good at the plate, Hughes looked good in his first postseason work (despite giving up an 0-2 HR – inexcusable Phil), this was a game the Yanks were expected/supposed to lose (they’re only down 0-1), and finally, the last two years when the Yanks have won Game 1 they’ve gone on to lose the series, so maybe a first game loss will reverse that.

PS: Is that stadium some kind of launching pad or what? I didn’t think at least two of those HRs had any shot of getting out.