NOTES FROM THE NAT: Vancouver Canadians news

The A’s will be playing game two of their spring training series against the Brewers today, at 12:05pm, and or very own Diamond Dallas Braden, the king of the screwball, will be throwing pitches for the green and gold crew.

Braden has been in and out of the Majors over the last two years, but it was in 2004 that he was the talk of the minor league, stomping the living crap out of the NWL’s best hitters when, as a reliever for the C’s, he decided to bring his screwball out of mothballs and suddenly found it was unhittable.

7, 8 and 10-strikeout games were common from there on, while base hits were as scarce as Roger Clemens believers, and as Braden jumped up the system, the nasty results just kept coming… until his arm started getting tired around the AA level.

Suddenly, in the Texas League, he was hittable again, and before long he was REALLY hittable, and then the A’s shut him down for surgery and rehabbing.

Since then, he’s rarely shown the screwball, and the A’s seem intent on not only keeping him from throwing it, but refusing to admit it ever existed.

To be fair to the A’s, the screwball is a pitcher-killer if thrown incorrectly. From Wikipedia:

The difficulty in mastering the screwball, and the unusual stress it can place on the pitching-arm — throwing the screwball requires that the forearm be powerfully pronated as the ball is released — has made the pitch an increasingly-rare part of the modern pitcher’s pitching arsenal. Christy Mathewson said of the screwball: "It is a very hard ball to deliver. Pitching it ten or twelve times a game kills my arm, so I save it for the pinches." Carl Hubbell, who threw the screwball much more often than did Mathewson, twisted his left arm so severely from years of throwing the pitch that his left palm eventually faced outward when the arm was at rest. In general, the pitch is seldom recommended to young pitchers because of the potential harm it can do to their arms.

So which Dallas Braden will be on the mound today? The unhittable prince of the trick pitch from 2004-5, or the upper-80’s fastball-throwing delicate flower of 2006-7?

Sadly, we won’t know until after the game, since it isn’t being covered on radio. Hopefully Jeremy is there with his notebook and will witness the renaissance of Dallas Braden firsthand. 

Play ball!
The A’s agreed to contracts with six players on one-year deals for the
2008 season: catchers Bowen and Powell; infielders Kevin Melillo,
Donnie Murphy and Gregorio Petit; and pitcher Dan Meyer.

The Oakland Athletics kick off their spring training games in the Arizona Cactus League today with a game against the Chicago Cubs at 1:05pm Milwaukee Brewers at 12:05pm (curse you, non-updated 2007 spring training websites!).

The line-up for today’s game (with year played in Vancouver, if applicable):

RF Travis Buck (’05)
2B Mark Ellis
1B Daric Barton
LF Jack Cust
DH Dan
Johnson (’01)
SS Bobby Crosby
C Kurt Suzuki (’04)
3B Jack Hannahan
CF Chris
Denorfia

Joe Blanton (’02) will be on the mound, and Andrew Brown, Jeff Gray (’05), Fernando Hernandez, Jay Marshall, Dan Meyer, Kirk Saarloos, Ryan Wing and Brad Ziegler are expected to throw, either in the game or the bullpen.

In attendance, alongside the A’s major-leaguers, will be former Vancouver Canadians catcher Anthony Recker (’05), third baseman Jeff Baisley (’05) and outfielder Danny ‘The Grape’ Putnam (’04).

None of the three look likely to start the season in the majors, no matter how well they hit in the spring, but all of  them have a shot at making the big club at some stage in 2008.

Baisley will be looking to impress as former Gold Glove 3B, Eric Chavez, is rehabbing from a series of off-season surgeries and may struggle to play every day (though if tradition is anything to go by, it will take a decapitation to get the bat out of his hand). Jack Hannahan would likely be first choice to replace Chavez at the hot corner, but such a move could see Baisley brought up for depth at the position.

Putnam is also a chance of getting another cup of coffee later in the season, though with all the AAAA outfielders and prospects the A’s have brought in recently, it’s unlikely to be due to injury, as was the case in 2007, when Putnam was just about the last outfielder in the system above the AA level when he was called up to The Show.

Finally, though Recker isn’t projected to get beyond Triple-A this season (perhaps even AA), the sudden retirement of Jeremy Brown may open some chances for him to move quickly - especially if he can do well before Landon Powell comes back from his blown knee. The A’s picked up a bunch of bullpen warm-up-standard catchers to slug it out for the #3 spot in the depth chart behind Rob Bowen and 2004 Vancouver catcher Kurt Suzuki, but the club has invested time and money in Recker’s progress, and may just give him a push upwards if he can unleash his Hulkasized pythons on spring training pitchers.

UPDATE: While the A’s lost 7-1, and Joe Blanton got crushed, former Vancouver Canadians Gregorio Petit, Anthony Recker, and Dan Johnson had good days. Petit went 1-1 pinch-hitting for Jack Hannahan, Recker went 1-3 as catcher, and DJ knocked out spring trainings first A’s home run in a 1-4 day.

MAGNANTE VS GEREN 
Those who don’t pay much attention to spring training might want to keep an eye on one of Saturday’s games, where a split squad of the A’s will take on the South African national team. Vancouver manager Rick Magnante has been associated with the South African squad since the 2006 World Baseball Classic, so you can guarantee the Springboks will be firing on all cylinders, whether they’re facing the best the A’s have to offer or a hodge podge of minor leaguers and non-roster invitees.

While on the WBC front, it seems the 2009 Classic is likely to be played all around the world, with group stages taking place in Tokyo, San Juan, Mexico City and Toronto, before the main games head to the US.

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A few years back, I got off a bus in the middle of downtown Memphis Tennessee. I had about an hour to kill before the Greyhound would be refueled and headed off on the next part of my LA to Cincinnati trip, so I decided to give the bus station breakfast a miss and snoop around a little.

As I walked out the doors of the Greyhound terminal, I was met with a vision of the way things should be. A beautiful new ballpark, built in an early 20th century style, that seemed to have been scooped out of the downtown core with a gigantic spoon. As I walked up to the wrought iron gates, the brilliant green of a well-tended outfield jumped out to meet me, and crowds of local folks - some in seats, some with blankets and picnic baskets for use on the grassy bleachers - all of them coming to watch their team.

And when I say ‘their team’, I mean it in a literal sense.

Back in 1997, Dean Jernigan spent $8 million in bringing the Redbirds
to town, and then he gave the team to the city, putting a foundation of 17 civic and business leaders in control, vowing never to take a salary for all his efforts.

Since then, the Memphis Redbirds have blossomed as a community-owned, non-profit Triple-A franchise of the St Louis Cardinals. They earn about $5m a year after expenses, which they then give away to charities in the Memphis area. They’re the only professional sports franchise that is exempt from paying taxes by virtue of their charitable status. The foundation’s bylaws dictate that the leadership of the group must be 50% women, and that the board should be made up of similar ethnic backgrounds as the people of Memphis proper.

In short, it’s baseball fan nirvana; a team of the people, for the people, by the people.

The NFL’s Green Bay Packers have been a community-owned team since 1923; one that wouldn’t exist in its present location if not for the absence of a single ownership group determined to maximize revenues above all else.

But a new form of community ownership has recently arisen - in English soccer, no less - that I think has deep implications for the presently on-life-support Canadian baseball community.

That is the model of ‘crowdsourcing’.
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If you watched the Roger Clemens steroid hearings that came out of the US Congress last week, three things should have jumped right out at you.

1) Congressional Chair Henry Waxman looks like a Hanna Barbera cartoon.

2) Clemens threw his wife under the bus for using roids, but still claims they never entered his own system, which has to be the final nail in the coffin containing his credibility. 

3) There’s possibly no worse liar in the history of the world than Roger Clemens. I mean, this dude couldn’t lie straight in an iron lung. He fell just short of crossing his fingers every time he spoke. As Jon Stewart pointed out on The Daily Show last night, if you’re playing poker against Clemens and he licks his lips twice, "Go all-in."

It should be said, this Congress has been perhaps the worst in history for actually enforcing the oaths it makes those testifying before it utter. Every Congressional Hearing on anything the slightest bit important has been dotted with obvious liars and muddlers, folks who refuse to answer questions, folks who talk in circles, and folks who refuse to hand over evidence that has been subpoenaed.

But they may yet (and it’s still a ‘may’) decide that lying to the face of Congress in a way that makes ones pants suddenly catch fire is just uncool, and it would seem that all indicators are pointing to Roger Clemens as being the guy that’ll take the ‘making an example of someone’ hit.

Says the New York Times: 

A Congressional committee has taken the first steps toward asking the Department of Justice to start a criminal investigation into whether Roger Clemens committed perjury during testimony about performance-enhancing drugs, according to three lawyers with knowledge of the matter.

A draft letter referring Clemens, but not his accuser Brian McNamee, had been drawn up by staff members for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform by the end of last week, according to two of the lawyers.

Of course, this should make Raffy "never ever ever" Palmeiro happy, since he too lied to the face of Congress. It should also make Sammy "no speaka da English’ Sosa happy, since he’s claims not to understand what was being asked of him are hilarious. Really, Sammy? You don’t speak the language? That’s odd - you spoke it in Vancouver when you played Triple-A ball - what changed?

One person that has some questions to answer now, especially if Clemens is indicted, is sports reporter Jason Whitlock, the lumbering oaf who, until recently, wrote for ESPN’s Page 2 site.

See, Whitlock has been yelling for years now that the only reason Barry Bonds was being hounded by the media was because he’s black. Nothing to do with him killing hallowed records while pumping elephant juice into his veins. Nothing to do with him being an ass to all and sundry. Nothing to do with perjury, or calling those that doubted him nasty names, or having his buddy go to prison for a year to prevent him from testifying against Bonds, or the overwhelming evidence against the guy.

No, according to Whitlock, it’s all about colour.

To hear Whitlock discuss the issue, the ‘media’ is one giant club of white guys who get together of a morning, play some Pat Boone albums, and say, "So, lads, which of these dark fellows are we going to sacrifice today?"
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UBC Thunderbirds baseball coach Terry McKaig often sends out notes to the media outlining results, highlights, notable players, etc, throughout the season, and generally they’re interesting reads. The most recent note, however, was somewhat… well… light on details:

Lost 17-3 to St. Martins.  No real highlights to speak of
obviously.

I’m sorry, I feel bad for the ‘Birds and all, but that press release was the most awesome thing I’ve read in months. 

The Rainflappers are on a five-game losing skid, having dropped frames to Fresno Pacific, Montana State-Billings, St Martins, and (since the email went out) West Oregon and the always tough Lewis-Clark State, which really puts paid to the four-game win streak they had going previously, but while we always knew this would be a rebuilding year after the great 2007 season, McKaig’s straight-shooting, no BS style will make it much easier to get through. 

Not so easy to get through is Don Taylor and the increasingly ridiculous CANUCKS1040 (sorry, I mean TEAM1040) radio day. After being subjected to weeks of "Hey, you’ve been spending a lot of time in Hawaii lately, what’s going on with that" - "Oh, you haven’t heard about the great real estate deals going on there right now?" routine, regular sports talk listeners then had to suffer through endless discussion about how Taylor was not just going to have a vasectomy (do I really need to know that?), but that he would be talking his listeners through the procedure with a series of infotainment ads, presumably as a means of cutting himself a better price with the surgeon.

Oh, joy. Five hours of discussion about whether Trevor Linden has lost his touch AND an in-depth chat about the inner workings (or lack thereof) of Don Taylor’s junk? Who says Vancouver radio is crap?

Well, the punchline wasn’t a long time coming (no pun intended).

During a commercial break this morning on Jim Rome’s show (which I always switch off after the first half hour, when it becomes a series of endlessly repeated one-liner emails) came the latest chapter in Taylor’s Junk Removal Adventure.

To wit: He’s backed out.

So now it’s not "I’m going to get it done by the most painless vasectomy surgeon in town" - it’s "we decided we weren’t ready, but when I am, I’ll be going to the most trusted guy in the business…"

Oh, unintended hilarity, thy name is Taylor.

First of all, who uses their radio gig to cut themselves a deal on a surgical procedure? You just KNOW that the surgeon didn’t come to the radio station, wondering if any on-air personalities were in the running for a snip - clearly Taylor went to the guy and offered him a deal, and the station (remarkably) saw nothing wrong with going along with it.

But for him to then back out after weeks of talk about how painless it was going to be, and how this guy was so good it’d be easier than getting a tooth filled, to back out of the procedure at the zero hour is just priceless.

Though, to be fair, it does mean he can use his lame "heshootshescores!" catchphrase just a little bit longer.

And I guess I’ll have to wait a while before I can start calling him The Empty-Netter.

The New York Post found something going on in Nicaragua last week that they felt was worth documenting in photos. The Boston Globe? Not so keen to follow suit.

The event was the handing out of free T-shirts to developing-world children by the World Vision organization.

So what?

Look closer. "New England Patriots, Superbowl Champions, 19-0."

See, the Patriots blew a load of cash (as every losing championship team does) on the creation of Superbowl-Winner merchandise, in anticipation of their victory and perfect 19-0 record. Only, the New York Giants weren’t playing by New England’s script, and that left the Pats stuck with thousands of shirts and caps.

Ever wonder what happens to those things?

Miguel from Diriamba, Nicaragua can tell you…

Just as soon as he gets away from the scary clown.

What really irks me about this is, the Pats wouldn’t dare give the shirts away in the US, because it’d be embarrassing for scores of kids to be walking around with an erroneous victory boast across their chests. Sure, there are plenty of kids in America who could use some new clothes right about now, as the cold of winter continues to bite, and they surely couldn’t care less if those clothes had a Pats logo or an LA Clippers logo, but sorry, the Pats aren’t about to let those shirts hit the streets in America. It would just be uncool.

On the other hand, if ten thousand kids in Nicaragua wear the shirts down the coalmine tomorrow, that’s fine, because they’re ‘third world’ kids and thus they don’t exist to Americans. They could be walking around in T-shirts that say "Tom Brady is an over-rated choker," and that would be a-okay, because they’re not REAL kids. They’re Nicaraguan kids. They don’t matter.

This is why, when you backpack through deepest darkest Africa, you’ll occasionally come across a tiny tribe of locals who are all wearing frayed "Denver Broncos, Superbowl XXII Champions" shirts and XFL caps.

Sidenote: Speaking of football leagues not called the NFL, word on the street has it that a former C’s front office staff member might have just crossed over and scored a fairly big gig down south. More news as it’s confirmed, but I’ll be interested to see if this individual’s tasseled loafers end up being replaced with snakeskin boots.

In the 2007 MLB Draft, the Oakland A’s made a questionable draftee choice, drafting Jonathan Johnston, a Catcher out of Navy (well, sort of).

Here is what Oz wrote about the former Patriot League standout last June:

When you see the words ‘no school’ listed after a draft pick’s name, it really does spark your interest. What happened to this kid? Did he not get into a college? Did he drop out? Did he get ignored in a previous draft? Maybe he went backpacking for a year after college?

Here’s what I can tell you - ENS Jon Johnston is a lefty catcher from my old stomping grounds of Hamilton Township NJ, who played for Navy. He was 4th in the Patriot League in runs scored in 2006, and a runaway 1st in stolen bases (in fact, he was 3rd in Patriot League history for steals in a season), which made him an All-Patriot League 2nd teamer.

It appears he finished his college career in 2006, didn’t get drafted, went into service on the USS PELELIU, did a little barnstorming for the US Military All-Stars, and put his name in again this year for the draft, and Oakland gave him a workout and decided he was worth a shot. To suggest he might be a longshot is an understatement, but if he’s stayed in shape and still has that base speed, he may make for an interesting dice roll.

Well, Oakland obviously cared about signing him because look what turned up on this week’s transaction list:

Oakland Athletics
Signed: C Jonathan Johnston

My guess as to what will happen is as good as yours, but could we be seeing him wearing a different kid of red and white this summer at the Nat?  His performance at Minor League Spring Training (which opens in two weeks), will definitely decide what his baseball future will hold, before returning to the sea.