WARNING!! Annual Off-Topic Baseball Thread. Esteemed Members BEWARE!!

[Jurassic Referee]

Originally Posted by M&M Guy

Chuck - how was the trip?

Had to be a success.....he saw JJ Putz in action.

[ChuckElias]

Originally Posted by Jurassic Referee

Had to be a success.....he saw JJ Putz in action.

Actually, JJ never made it into the game. But I couldn't resist taking a picture of the announcement that he was warming up.

The trip as a whole was great. Can't say I enjoyed the city of Detroit very much, but the ballpark was beautiful on the outside and very nice inside. Food choices were fairly limited: burgers and hot dogs, sausages, nachos, and chicken fingers. Great view of the field from just about anywhere. Very cool scoreboard. Plus it was "Negro League Celebration" weekend, so the teams wore old-time uniforms.

Toronto was beautiful. The city is awesome. The SkyDome is pretty cool. Not much to look at from the outside, but inside is really cool. The dome actually opened while we were inside. Our seats were on the 3rd base side and when the dome opened, the CN Tower was directly in front of us. Unbelievable view. The video scoreboard is the largest TV in the world, we were told. The upper deck seats have the steepest slope (35%) of any park in the majors (which is hard to believe after sitting way up in Shea). And when we took the ballpark tour on Monday morning, they let us go out on the field in center. Very cool. The food, again, was pretty limited. Pretty much the same as Detroit.

Very successful weekend (except at the casinos in Detroit! )

[Nevadaref]

Chuck,
Welcome back and glad that you had a good trip.

Now watch your SportsCenter tonight. They have to tell you when was the last time this happened:

In tonight's game between Washington and Florida each leadoff batter homered, not just sometime during the game, but as the 1st hitter in the first innning! Soriano for Washington and Ramirez for Florida.

[ChuckElias]

According to ESPN.com, the Wash/Fla game is the 28th time in MLB history that each team's lead-off batter hit a HR. They didn't list the last time it happened.

Here are a couple other stories that I thought were kind of interesting.

Jose Canseco's All-Star pitching debut proved to be short.

The former major league star retired only one batter Tuesday night while giving up four runs in the first All-Star game in the independent Golden Baseball League.

"I feel great -- as good as ever," Canseco said.

Before his struggles on the mound, Canseco wowed the crowd of 3,111 with some titanic drives to win the home run derby.

This story is interesting to me b/c Canseco made the All-Star team after playing only 10 games in his latest stint in the minors. And now the team says that they are considering using him as a pitcher in regular games. Ridiculous.

A better story, tho, is John "Buck" O'Neil. He's 94 years old and walked twice in the Northern League All-Star Game. He led off the top of the first with an intentional walk and was pulled for a pinch-runner. However, he was then immediately traded and therefore eligible to play for the other team in the All-Star Game. So he also led off the bottom of the first. He was again intentionally walked, but didn't like it and took a swing at one of the pitches. The umpire got caught up in the moment, apparently, b/c it took 5 balls before O'Neil was awarded first base.

Clad in a red-and-white Kansas City Monarchs jersey, O'Neil said he thought the last time he had swung a bat in a game was in 1955.

Asked if he remembered who he was facing in that last at-bat, he replied: "I don't remember yesterday, and you ask me who the pitcher was in 1955?"