Those Brooklyn cops wouldn't have used Tasers

Do you think any goofball fan will ever run on to the field in Philadelphia again?

The photos and video of the kid getting himself Tasered out in short left field Monday night during the Phillies’ game with the Cardinals are all around the Internet now.

The 17-year-old knucklehead went down like a bag of groceries falling off the counter when he got zapped.

There’s all kinds of hand-wringing now about “excessive use of force’’ and so on, but there’s zero sympathy here for the kid. You sometimes need to learn the hard way and he presumably has learned his lesson. Anybody who sees the video might be persuaded that staying in the stands makes more sense. Less painful, too.

There’s a rich history of fannus interruptus in pro sports games and the culprits, usually but not always drunk, usually end up with a good beating at some point. They say they would get rubber hoses across the ribs in old Yankee Stadium, under the stands.

There was a famous NFL case in 1971 concerning a Baltimore Colts linebacker named Mike Curtis, whose nickname was Mad Dog. Curtis was a great linebacker who should be in the Hall of Fame, but had a nutty side. On day in old Memorial Stadium a drunk ran on to the field, picked up the football and started to run. Curtis coiled and absolutely levelled him. He said he, as a taxpaying citizen of Baltimore, was merely helping enforce city ordinances.

There are milder responses to invading fans, of course. One time David Beckham kicked the soccer ball at a streaker who came calling. Another time two war protesters ran on to the field at Dodgers Stadium and tried to light a U.S. flag on fire. Rick Monday, playing centre field for the Cubs, ran over and scooped up the flag while they fumbled with the matches, thus earning himself a lifetime of ovations – and a trade to the Dodgers that off-season. (Ask Expo fans how that all turned out.)

One fan-on-field case merits special interest. It involved the Brooklyn Dodgers and a very much despised umpire named George Magerkurth, whose run-ins with Dodgers manager Leo Durocher were legendary. So hated was Magerkurth in Brooklyn that when the Dodgers won the 1941 pennant and held a victory parade, one of the “floats’’ was a coffin supplied by a local funeral home with a sign on it that simply said “Magerkurth.”

Late in that ’41 season, a call by Magerkurth went against the Dodgers and a crazed fan named Frank Gernano leapt from the stands, blindsided the ump, knocked him down and proceeded to sit on him and punch the hell out of him. The fans went crazy, of course.

It turned out Gernano was working for a pickpocket ring to create a diversion and while he wailed away at the hated ump, his confederates were lifting wallets all around the ballpark.

Seeing who the victim was, the Brooklyn cops probably wouldn’t have Tasered him, even if they’d known what one was.

Another Great Stupid Moment

We just had one of those great stupid moments. Derek Jeter won the Robert Clemente Award and they had a small ceremony, Clemente’s widow Vera presenting him the award. (They will repeat the presentation pre-game on the field.)

It’s a very good honour involving community dedication, named for the great ball player, and greater man, who died on New Year’s Eve, 1972, flying relief supplies from his native Puerto Rico to earthquake victims in Nicarauga.

So Jeter, who was born in June of 1974, makes a nice little acceptance speech and the first question he is asked is whether he knew Clemente.

Uh . . . .

There’s a story, which some swear is true, that after Don Larsen pitched his perfect game in the 1956 World Series, across the road at the original Yankee Stadium, the first question a breathless TV guy asked him was whether it was the best game he’d ever pitched. Different guy than today.

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A guy with an hour to kill left the ballpark, crossed 161st Street and cruised the sports bars and T-shirt joints packed along River Avenue. There is some serious, beer-lubricated atmosphere out there on a pleasant fall evening, the music loud and thumping.

There were plenty more Phillies fans, clad in their team’s garb, than I would have expected to see and while there was some back-and-forth jabbering, it seemed entirely good natured. But the night was certainly young.

The only “special’’ T-shirt was entirely predictable: Written in Phillies script, you can guess what it said. Think of a rude verb that begins with F, spelled with “Ph’’ at the beginning. Not too difficult.

Here is culture clash. A very large stage is being erected behind second base, where Alicia Keys and Jay-Z are scheduled to perform a half-hour before the first pitch. While it is being set up, the stadium organist plays ‘’Over the Rainbow.’’ So there’s Yip Harburg and Harold Arlen’s greatest hit as a backdrop for these contemporary performers. Where else could this happen?

Lee so good even Charlie's a little surprised

How good was Cliff Lee against the Yankees in the Phillies’ ultimately breezy 6-1 win in Game One of the 10th World Series?

Better than even his manager, Charlie Manuel, figured he would ever be.

“When we got him, I knew he was good. I had seen him before. But if you want to know the truth, I didn’t know he was as good as he’s been,’’ Manuel said after the game and note that the Philadelphia manager didn’t trust his shaky bullpen, even with a 6-0 lead in the ninth, Lee at 105 pitches and the Yankee bullpen reduced to ragtag status once again.

Lee, obtained form Cleveland in a mid-season trade for just this kind of performance, struck out 10m walked zero and gave up only four hits through eight innings before allowing two hits and an unearned run in the ninth. He departed after throwing 122 pitches. If Manuel is tempted to use him in Game Four on short rest – and how could he not be? – he didn’t act that way.

“We’ll see how it goes,’’ Manuel said. “I mean, we’ll just see where we’re at. We’ve got time.’’

More important, they have home-field advantage now and the Yankees are in almost a must-win situation Thursday with A.J. Burnett, not exactly Mr. Clutch, throwing Game Two for the home side. Burnett has been pretty good in his home post-season starts, but both times that was carrying a 1-0 series lead courtesy of C.C. Sabathia, who was good Wednesday, yielding only a pair of solo homers to Chase Utley, but was nowhere near as good as Lee, who looked like Mr. Cool all night, fielding with aplomb in addition to pitching with precision.

“About being cool or whatever, I’ve always been that way. This is the same game I’ve been playing my whole life and this is the stage I’ve wanted to be on since I was a little kid,’’ Lee said. “Now that I’m here, I’ve already put the work in (so) there’s no sense in being nervous and worried. It’s time to go out there and let my talents and my skills take over and execute my pitches.’’

He did that with all of them, a sweet change-up and   well-behaved cut fastball and down-breaking curve ball. Derek Jeter had three hits, but the middle of the Yankee order was particularly clueless. Mark Teixeira was 0 for 4 with two strikeouts and Alex Rodriguez was 0 for 4 with three whiffs.

“This whole lineup, you’ve got to be unpredictable.     You’ve got to show them stuff they haven’t seen before. Mix speeds, mix locations and don’t get in patterns,’’ he said, making it sound as easy as he made it look.

That was a terrific lineup he completely stifled and while it is only one game, does anybody still feel like lying $200 to win $100 on the Yankees? The odds have surely changed in this 105th World Series and it didn’t take long.

 

Out here having fun in that warm California sun

The Angels were a loose bunch when working out at the Big A Friday morning, getting in a few swings under glorious hot sunshine before heading east. They got off a very large hook Thursday night with their 7-6 win and even down 3-2 to the Yankees and facing a five-hour flight to New York after today's workout, they were jazzed.

They were smiling and joking and when little Erick Aybar launched a longish batting-practice home run, teammates started needling him and he gave it right back to them.

You often see teams messing around and having fun like this. It's nothing new. Facing elimination in the LCS, there was no sign of tension or apprehension and that's a good thing. At this point they figure they have nothing to lose.

"I think you always have to feel that way. You can't be afraid to lose," manager Mike Scioscia said. "You can't be afraid to fail. When you get into that mode, you can really play aggressive and that's when your best baseball comes out."

Their best baseball tends to be speed-based. That part of the game hasn't really expressed itself yet in this series. Scioscia still has it up his sleeve, although Andy Pettitte, who starts for the Yankees in Game No. 6, can be very effective at shutting down the running game.

"They're paying a lot of attention to it. There are some things you can't force," Scioscia said. "They won a hundred and some games for a reason, because they do a lot of things well on the field. But we're going to keep pressing them."

Scioscia said he might have "subtleties" in his lineup for Saturday, but no major changes. But no one should be surprised if leadoff man Chone Figgins (2 for 30 in the post-season) and ninth-place hitter Aybar (nine hits and a walk from A.J. Burnett that loomed huge in the Yankees blowing the 6-4 lead) don't switch places.

One more thought on Major League Baseball's switch to an all-veteran crew for the World Series: It might not really matter.

Just because an ump is a veteran doesn't mean he doesn't screw up. Look at Tim McClelland in the fourth game here Tuesday. The other thing about veteran umps is that they don't always hustle like the younger ones and not to pick on McClelland, but he wasn't anywhere close to correct position when he called Nick Swisher out for leaving third base early in that game. Plus, veterans umps are sometimes less likely to seek help on a play, so sure they are in their judgment.

So it might not make a difference and if this World Series has a number of obviously botched calls – which no one is hoping for – we're all going to hear cries out for increasing TV replay in baseball, beyond its limited use now.

Walking A-Rod gives Angels their best chance -- but barely

ANAHEIM

Did the Yankees lose this intense and exciting ball game, 7-6 to the Angels, or did the Angels win it?

With the ALCS heading back to New York, Yankees leading 3-2, there’s an argument each way, but know this: The Yankees should be awfully worried about both Joba Chamberlain and Phil Hughes, both of whom are very hittable right now.

Obviously, too, A.J. Burnett’s mental fragility is a problem. If he melts down twice in this ball park – to start the first inning, then immediately after the Yankees had scrapped back to give him a two-run lead in the seventh inning – what happens if and when he gets to Philadelphia, where the fans eat their young?

In his first post-season appearance on the road, Burnett showed that, unlike C.C. Sabathia, so far he isn’t worth the money.

But the best part of this game was Mike Scioscia doing what a lot of us figured he would and that’s walking Alex Rodriguez intentionally, rather than give him a chance to beat them.

First time, Scioscia even broke that old cardinal rule of baseball, the one that says you never put the potential winning run on base intentionally. But he did it – which kind of goes hand in hand with the strategy – and sure enough Rodriguez came around to count the go-ahead run when the Yanks scored six two-out runs in the seventh to take a 6-4 lead.

After Burnett and the bullpen blew that lead, the Angels carried a 7-6 lead into the ninth and closer Brian Fuentes got two quick outs. Then came the four fingers for A-Rod, even though he was the tying run. Fuentes loaded the bases with a walk and a hit batter and went to a full count before popping up Nick Swisher to end it, so that’s how close – one more ball – he came to making A-Rod the tying run.

“Obviously, if we’ve got some action in front of us, first and second or a runner at first, we probably would not have,’’ Scioscia said. “But in that situation you just want to keep Alex in the park.’’

“It got a little congested there at the end of the game, but we just felt it was better to take our chances with some of the lefties following him.’’

None of this should be a surprise. Scioscia’s Angels, you recall, intentionally walked Barry Bonds seven times in the 2002 World Series, when Bonds was at the height of his powers.

“There’s a huge difference in the lineup we’re facing as opposed to the lineup we were facing in ’02, with Barry Bonds in it. I think the Giants had a terrific club, but their offensive lineup then was nowhere near the depth we’re facing now with the Yankees. So it’s not about controlling one guy. We have to make pitches all the way through the lineup.’’

The Yankees made the strategy backfire once, but not with the game on the line in the ninth. The Angels might not have much of a chance, but whatever chances they have are much better if they keep taking the bat out of the big guy’s hands.’’

There was no Fatal Attraction for El Duque, back then

ANAHEIM

There are a lot of baseball people here, from league officials to scouts to players and executives, and every one of them, in his heart of hearts, is glad today that he isn’t Steve Phillips.

The former Mets GM and now ESPN talking head apparently is getting Fatal Attractioned – can that be a verb? – by a 22-year-old co-worker and it’s a messy one.

The reason Phillips is in the conversation here, other than the fact that everyone with time to kill before the ball game seems to love nasty gossip, is because of something I mis-heard at the pre-game press conference with Angels’ manager Mike Scioscia.

These are mostly time-wasters at this point. They drag in the managers a couple of hours before game time and they almost always refuse to answer any questions that have to deal with looking forward. Scioscia won’t talk about anything having to do with losing and Joe Girardi wouldn’t even offer at the lamest softball question about the Phillies.

But my head snapped up after I thought I heard someone ask Scioscoa, “Do you have a relationship with Phillips?’’ What the questioner, a fellow from Philadelphia, had really asked was, “Do you have a relationship with the Phillies?’’

Big difference, no?

Scioscia did the usual dance – “I’m only thinking about the Yankees right now’’ – and things continued along those lines. It was safe to go back to sleep.

In the years these things have gone on, I can’t think of many times they were greatly worthwhile. Usually, someone needs a specific quote for a specific pre-game plugger story; for instance, Scioscia was asked how he defines “bulldog’’ and whether John Lackey is one. That kind of thing.

The best one of these I can remember came a few years ago in Yankee Stadium. The Yanks had Orlando Hernandez, the pitcher known as El Duque, who had defected from Cuba and now was pitching in the World Series. Pretty sure in was 1998 against the Padres. Before the first game, MLB brings in the second game’s pitchers, and so on, and so here came Hernandez, speaking through a translator, for those writing the advance stories.

Someone asked him how he would prepare for the assignment of pitching in a World Series and it went to the translator, went around the language mixmaster a couple of times and came back, essentially, as, “I will smoke two cigars and spend the day in bed with my woman.’’

Now that, friends, is a quote and Major League Baseball officials went scurrying to sanitize it before it got printed on the quote sheets.

He went out and pitched a hell of a game the next day and beat the Padres, too.

From the clubhouse laptop to Santa Anita in 45 minutes

ANAHEIM

Whoever put off days, or more precisely off days without travel, into one of these League Championship Series, is either an idiot or a saint.

If we were stuck in some rainy, cold eastern city today, it would definitely be the former. But this is sunny California; the temperature is in the high 20s, Santa Anita is racing, the tops are down, if you know what I mean and I think you do, and the Yankees and Angels are working out fairly early in advance of Thursday’s fifth and possibly deciding game.

So the powers that be who are spacing out these league series will read nothing bad about themselves. At least not here. Today. Not unless I blow the expense money at the racetrack.

The reason they are inserting these days off has to do with the drawing power of football, specifically the mighty NFL, which baseball does not wish to challenge. The World Series, which used to begin and end on weekends (that was at least the plan) now will begin mid-week and end the same way, with only one weekend going head to head with the NFL and getting killed in the ratings. So these LCS are extended to make less of a gap before the World Series begins. That’s the theory, anyway. Both the Phillies Wednesday and the Yankees Thursday could shut them down in five games, which would mean a six-day wait until things crank up again in Yankee Stadium.

If Alex Rodriguez can stay this mind-numbingly hot with six days off between games, God bless him.

By the way, a wander through the Yankee clubhouse today revealed one more way things have changed. Used to be that a clubhouse had a TV set, newspapers, magazines (some of the one-hand variety), candy bars, a couple of beat-up couches and a coffee maker. Now there are big, flat-screen TVs, the skin mags have been replaced by journals focusing on wealth management, there are things like fruit along with all the candy and, biggest difference, there is a table full of laptop computers streaming video.

Matter of fact, after Monday’s defeat here that included pinch-runner Brett Gardner getting thrown out trying to steal on a pitch-out, he was encamped before a laptop, replaying video of the Angels’ defence on the play. Even in a clubhouse, technology is king.

Here was a game with lots to talk about

This, finally, was better baseball after all kinds of bonehead stuff so far in the post-season.

It was very long, of course, and with some dumb moments – Bobby Abreu’s Minnesota Twins-style baserunning, for starters -- but the Angels coming back to beat the Yankees 5-4 in 11 innings had a couple of moments of inside stuff that fans could love.

For instance, Angel manager Mike Scioscia, who had a much better game than the jittery looking Joe Girardi, didn’t even bother with trying to mess around with the now fearsome Alex Rodriguez at the plate against Brian Fuentes, two out and nobody on in the ninth inning of a 4-4 tie. He just held up four fingers, walking A-Rod and going after the next hitter, who was Jerry Hairston Jr. Fuentes struck him out easily.

Rodriguez, who is finally the playoff force the Yankees have always paid him to be – while the rest of the team completely stops hitting in the clutch, please note – had drilled that game-tying homer in Game No. 2 off Fuentes, on an 0-2 pitch, no less. So Scioscia didn’t even bother trying to get him out, although he said a repeat would need to be in the right situation.

“I don’t know exactly what situation would come up. I can’t give you a definitive answer. But two out in Yankee Stadium in the same situation, we would have walked him,’’ Scioscia said. “Leading off the inning? No, that was not on my mind (him) leading off an inning.’’

Abreu, to get back to him, roped a line drive to centre field leading off the eighth in a tie game, flew around second, then hit the brakes. Centrefielder Melky Cabrera, who was 0 for 5 and looked lost all game, badly overthrew the relay man, second baseman Robinson Cano. Shortstop Derek Jeter was the trailer and jumped high for the ball. Then he spun and tossed to first baseman Mark Teixeira, whose job it is to follow the runner to second for just such an eventuality as this. They got Abreu by several feet in whatr looked, at the time, like a deflating mistake, the kind the Twins made in running themselves out of the earlier series against the Yankees.

“I heard the crowd roaring, then I heard the crowd go, ‘Uuuuhhh.’ So I figured he (Abreu) had stopped,’’ Jeter said later. “Tex did a good job of following the runner.’’

“I think there was some great baseball on that field,’’ Scioscia said. “I think there was a lot of twists and turns and both teams played a terrific game. We just got it done in the end.’’

Yes, there was some excellent stuff and given the way this post-season has gone, it’s about time.