Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - Posts

A/V club

*Kenny Williams appeared on Baseball Tonight's phone call segment.  Karl Ravech asked him about Crede's haircut and Buehrle's tarp-slide ban and insisted that Sox management laughs more than any other team's front office, but they're trying to maintain a successful organization that wins in a dignified manner. 

He's the second Sox I've seen appear in that segment -- Jim Thome was on before, and Thome prefaced all his answers with "Well..." and spoke with a drawn-out Midwestern accent.  It's supposed to be a quick segment, but like his at-bats, Thome extended it.

*Ed Farmer needs to lay off Barry Bonds.  Not that Bonds deserves it; I just hate when he's brought up in a game that has nothing to do with him.  We had to deal with it with the Sunday Night Baseball crew, but since The Score doesn't have "Bonds on Bonds" to promote there's really no point in it.  Seemingly whenever the Giants are brought up, Farmer rails on the perjury-defendant-to-be, mainly calling him the worst teammate ever in various forms. 

He tries to drag Chris Singleton into the equation by asking him how his reading of "Game of Shadows" is coming along; Singleton said that his progress has stalled the last couple of days.  I think I deserve to not have to know that fact.  People who make a conscious decision to avoid Bonds whenever possible shouldn't be hit with it when they're listening to the White Sox.  This would never have happened if John Rooney were still alive.

*Singleton needs to speed it up.  It's frustrating to know what happens before Singleton says it -- you can basically go by the reaction of the crowd.  Not only does he call it late, but he leaves the most essential piece of information for the very end.  It's tough to describe textually, but it's something like:

[crack of the bat]
[crowd cheers]
And Jermaine Dye...
[crowd continues to cheer]
hits a liner...
[more cheering]
that drops in for a single.

Sometimes it takes a good five seconds for him to get out what we must know, and it's even tougher to get a mental picture on developing plays.

I realize that he's not going to be a good broadcaster for a long time, but I'd rather him focus on getting the thing we need to know out first, even if it comes at the expense of complete sentences.  "Single, Dye," would be preferable at this point. 

The power of Samson compels him

First Kenny Williams nearly fined Mark Buehrle for doing his tarp slides during Sunday's rain delay, which was understandable.

Now, Jerry Reinsdorf says he wants Joe Crede and A.J. Pierzynski to cut their hair -- and now he's gone too far.

Sure, Crede's flowing, flaxen locks and patchy sideburns don't exactly cover his redneck past, but his comeliness is not what's at stake here.  It's his hitting that's on the line.

Since Joe came back from the DL last September spotting a shaggier 'do, he hasn't remembered that he's supposed to pop everything up, especially when runners are in scoring position.  Instead, he's hitting line drive after line drive and tearing the cover off the ball.  Here are his lines from the last three baseball months:

September:  .359/.419/.759
Playoffs:  .289/.319/.622
April:  .325/.375/.600

You don't want to mess with that kind of production, especially when Crede has a history of losing whatever he found at the plate for weeks at a time.  You cut his hair, you cut his strength.

A.J., on the other hand, doesn't really matter so much.  Looking at his picture, he should probably be more concerned about growing a jaw.