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Guillen, Joyce lead Tigers past DiamondbacksOne night after they blew a late lead, the Detroit Tigers held on for a 3-2 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks on Saturday. That meant the Tigers could crank up the music in the visiting clubhouse to mark the end of a five-game losing streak. “It’s a 180-degree turnaround, man,” said Matt Joyce, whose seventh-inning solo homer provided the winning margin. “You go from the lowest low point to one of the highest highs.” Carlos Guillen hit a two-run single and Armando Galarraga (3-1) kept the Diamondbacks at bay, allowing two runs and one hit in six-plus innings. The Tigers, last in the AL Central, hope they can build on the victory. “I want us where we expect to win, not like it’s an exception,” manager Jim Leyland said. “It’s supposed to be the rule here, not the exception.” Todd Jones pitched the ninth for his sixth save in six chances. He hit leadoff man Justin Upton before retiring Mark Reynolds, Eric Byrnes and Chris Snyder on fly balls.
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Nationals 1B Nick Johnson put on disabled listNationals first baseman Nick Johnson was placed on the 15-day disabled list Thursday with a torn tendon sheath in his right wrist. He is expected to miss four to six weeks. Washington plans to activate first baseman Dmitri Young from the DL on Friday. Young went on the disabled list April 8, retroactive to April 3, with a lower back sprain. He had been on a rehab assignment at Double-A Harrisburg. Johnson was injured on a swing late in Tuesday night’s game. The oft-injured Johnson missed last season while recovering from a broken leg. He is batting .220 with five homers and 20 RBIs this year. He has walked 33 times, however, giving him a .415 on-base percentage. Aaron Boone started at first base Thursday. He broke up Mike Pelfrey’s no-hit bid with a leadoff single in the seventh inning and had two key assists in the field during Washington’s 1-0 win.
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Baseball Pitching Mind GamesConfidence in your Baseball Pitching can be a very fickle business. Some days you can feel like you are rolling along fine. Then, suddenly one bad thing happens. Then, another happens, and then another. Then, things really start to snowball. Other times you may feel that you can do no wrong. In this state, everything happens very easily for you and, you are able to do just about whatever you want. You are in what athletes call “the zone”.
The challenge for every pitcher is to try to get most of his starts into this zone range. One reason pitchers have difficulty getting into or remaining in the zone is due to a lack of concentration. A pitcher can improve his concentration during a game by following this simple ritual:
If you would like to see an example of this exercise, go rent the movie, “For The Love Of The Game”. In this movie, Kevin Costner’s character goes through this type of ritual when he uses the phrase, “Clear the mechanism” before pitching to the batter. Ultimately, you would like to get to a point where you have this level of concentration. A second challenge some pitchers have is confidence in their pitching when a mistake is made. A smart pitcher must recognize that mistakes will happen. He could throw a hanging curveball that gets hit for a double to the wall or maybe the second basemen boots an easy grounder. Regardless of how frustrating this might be, a good pitcher must have a short term memory for these errors. Much like a quarterback who just threw an interception, he must immediately forget that error and move onto the next pitch. This type of short-term amnesia ensures the error doesn’t get you twice by dwelling on it with the next batter. Here is a basic thinking ritual that can be performed to help with these situations:
This type of thinking ritual is good because it gives you a ready-made response for a stressful situation. It allows you to address the problem right away and compartmentalize it. Once you are able to do this, it is much easier to turn your attention to the next batter. As you advance in your baseball pitching career, you will begin to notice your success in baseball pitching tends to focus more on how you handle these situations more than any other aspect of your game.
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Orioles’ Hoey out for seasonJim Hoey, who pitched in 23 games for Baltimore last year, will miss the rest of the season following shoulder surgery. Hoey had shoulder inflammation during spring training after going 1-0 with a 6.00 ERA in three appearances. The right-hander had difficulty getting loose before pitching, a problem that continued after he was sent to the team’s minor league camp in late March. He was operated on May 4. “He’s another power arm in this organization. He’s still young enough. Get it taken care of and let’s get him ready for next year,” manager Dave Trembley said Wednesday. “It’s unfortunate that it happened, but I’m sure it’s a lot better for Jim. With the way the procedures are now, they’re telling me he’ll be better.” Also Wednesday, catcher Ramon Hernandez was scratched from the starting lineup because of his left wrist. It was the second straight game that Hernandez missed due to injury. He was joined in the dugout by third baseman Melvin Mora, who missed consecutive games after taking a hard grounder off his right shoulder. “He’s got soreness there,” Trembley said of Mora. “I don’t believe it’s serious. It backdates from spring training, when he dived into a base. It’s kind of like a bone bruise; it’s been bothering him for a while.” The Orioles are off Thursday, and Trembley expects Mora back in the lineup Friday for the opener of a three-game interleague series against the Washington Nationals.
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Maine shuts down NationalsRyan Church lashed a line drive to right in the sixth inning, harder hit than his homer in the second for sure, and he paused momentarily in the batter’s box to watch the ball’s trajectory. Once he saw Austin Kearns hesitate, he knew he had another hit. The liner-turned-double drove in two of Church’s four runs against his former team, and John Maine pitched six sharp innings to lead the New York Mets over the Washington Nationals 6-3 on Tuesday night. “I saw it start tailing a little bit and I saw him freeze, like ‘Whoa,”’ Church said, adding a shimmy for visual effect. “I’ve been in that position before.” A night after Mets starter Nelson Figueroa called the Nationals “softball girls” for cheering in the dugout during his loss, Maine (5-2) hit Felipe Lopez with his first pitch of the game. The ball grazed Lopez’s right leg but the leadoff hitter angrily threw his bat in front of the plate and briefly glared at Maine as he walked down first base. Maine said he was just trying to establish the inside of the plate.
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Ring Larnder and the Black Sox Scandal of 1919Chicago “Black Sox Scandal” of 1919 shook baseball to its core and almost ruined the game. Sportswriter Ring Lardner was at the heart of the story and reported regularly on the subsequent trial and banning of the eight players involved. The case shook Lardner’s belief in the game and robbed baseball of one of its greatest early writers.
Adapting from Eliot Asinof baseball classic 8 men out, director John Sayles put Lardner back into the baseball and literary spotlight during the 1988 hollywood film Eight Men Out. The movie included some big name talent, including John Cusack and John Mahoney (of many films and later Frasier fame). Sayles, himself an actor, played Lardner, who quickly figured out something was amiss behind the scenes of the Chicago White Sox. Strong reviews from strong media outlets and critics such as the New York Times Janet Maslin (”story of boyish enthusiam gone bad in an all too grown-up world, Eight Men Out represents a home run.”) gave this movie its preverbal legs and is now considered a classic amongst baseball film buffs. Ring began his sports writing career in South Bend, writing for both the South Bend Tribune & the South Bend Times. He moved to Chicago and wrote for the Chicago Inter-Ocean, the Chicago Examiner and finally the Chicago Examiner. After bouncing around for a few years, including taking time off to work on the fictional book You Know Me Al, Larnder returned to Chicago and resumed writing for the Tribune. This leads us into the scandal itself. The official story goes like this: Many players within the Chicago White Sox organization were upset with the pay and negotiation tactics of the Sox owner, Charles Comiskey. When Joseph Sullivan approached White Sox first baseman Arnold Gandil on the behalf of New York mobster Arnold Rothstein the timing was right. Gandil was able to gather seven other players (thus brining to the total to eight) to throw games vs the Cinncinati Reds in the 1919 World Series. For this the players were promised $100,000 total. Ring Lardner wrote pieces for the Tribune after the series hinting and reporting the rumors floating around the majors at the time, that the players may have been “on the take”. He continued with his stories and eventually major league baseball began to look into these assertions. After the owners appointed a new commissioner in Judge Kenesaw Mountin Landis the case was tried in a court of law. After a trial that was riddled with news coverage and most likely affected by public opinion, the players were acquitted. Judge Landis saw things another way however, as he proceeded to ban all eight players that were involved in the scandal. After the scandal of the 1919 Black Sox played itself out, Lardner continued to cover baseball until he retired from the Tribune. According to biographies, while Ring did cover the sport, he did begin subtly questioning the happenings and outcomes of games. Ring Lardner passed at the age of 48 due to complications from tuberculosis in 1933.
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Guerrero’s HR and 4 RBIs lead Angels over Chisox 10-7Nick Adenhart didn’t have long to enjoy his first major league victory. He was just happy to get it before he was sent down to the minors to make way for John Lackey’s return to the Los Angeles Angels’ rotation. After pitching the Angels to a 10-7 victory over the Chicago White Sox on Monday night, Adenhart was optioned to Triple-A Salt Lake and Jose Arredondo was recalled from the team’s Pacific Coast League club to give manager Mike Scioscia an extra arm in the bullpen before he gives the ball to Lackey for his first start of the season Wednesday night. Lackey, who won 18 games last season for the defending AL West champions, has been sidelined since March 21 with a strained right triceps. “My role was to come up for a few starts and do what I could to help this team win,” Adenhart said. “It was kind of a long week or so after a rough start but I made strides in the right direction. It was a little bit of a burden to not have that first W, but now I’ve got it out of the way and I can kind of move on. It feels good.” Adenhart (1-0) allowed four runs and nine hits in 5 2-3 innings, walking three and striking out one. It was the third start for the 21-year-old right-hander, who has given up 12 earned runs, 18 hits and 13 walks over 12 innings.
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Back in the lineup for Boston, Manny hits No. 498Manny Ramirez was back in Boston’s lineup, with a blast. After homering only once in his last 19 games, Ramirez hit a two-run shot in the first inning for the Red Sox at Minnesota on Monday. It was the 498th of his career and came off Twins starter Livan Hernandez. “I know I have two more to go, but I ain’t counting,” he said, sounding a bit like Yogi Berra. “If I hit 500, are they going to pick up my option? Why should I be pressing?” Ramirez was asked if it mattered to him to hit the milestone 500th at home at Fenway Park. “It’s not up to me,” he said. “It’s not like I’m driving a car, where I can go left or right.” Ramirez, who has eight homers this year, is in 24th place on baseball’s all-time list. The two-run shot also gave him 1,630 career RBIs to move past Harold Baines for 26th place. A sore right hamstring kept him out of Sunday’s starting lineup. “I’m sore, but just got to go out there,” Ramirez said.
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