Sunday reading (7/1)

Steve Batterson has a good article up at QCTimes.net

The scoring gap: Few in younger generation keep score at baseball gamesThe scoring gap: Few in younger generation keep score at baseball games

In an Xbox, iPod world, a stiff sheet of paper and a stubby pencil suits Lois Alonzo just fine.

She’s not alone, although the Swing of the Quad-Cities fan from Galesburg, Ill., admits it is getting more difficult to find other fans in the stands who keep score as the game progresses.

“It’s a different era. People sometimes look at me, wondering what in the world I’m doing, but it’s something I’ve done since I was a little girl,” Alonzo said.

“When I was growing up 50, 60 years ago, it was something people did. I always keep score.’’

Don Grensing of Davenport considers it a lost art.“You look around nnow, and you’re lucky to see a dozen other people at a game keeping score,” Grensing said.

There are a few people who score games back at home during Rattler games. I started when my parents first took me to County Stadium for Brewer games. When I took my trip and wound up in Chattanooga last September, I scored the game between the Lookouts and the Huntsville Stars. It's something that you do.

Great story on Wladimir Balentien (WI '04) at the Tacoma News-Tribune site today:

A GENUINE STAR ON THE RISE?

Karel Williams endured bumpy flights to remote outposts, drove over pothole-studded roads, scoured box scores, followed up on numerous tips, talked to coaches and attended countless games to get to this moment.

The Mariners scout has seen thousands of players. The one he’d followed since Little League and openly scouted for more than a year was now sitting in a plush chair of the Marriott Hotel on the island of Aruba, 15 miles off the coast of Venezuela. Williams had beaten five other teams and gambled on the game of family politics to get here.

Wladimir Balentien was 16, but he looked years older. He was the prospect scouts loved: His torso seemed packed with raw strength and his arm punished greedy baserunners. His power at the plate at a tryout earlier that year left Williams awed; he had scouted major league-caliber talent before, but this kid had something extra. This kid could be famous.

And Williams signed him. It took a call to Balentien’s mother for some late campaigning. It was a tactical success. Wladimir spurned his father’s choice, the San Diego Padres, and was sold on becoming a Mariner.

Even if it was tough at first

Balentien’s first stop in the pros: the Mariners’ baseball academy in Venezuela. His adjustment wasn’t easy. He spoke Dutch and Papiamento – a creole language that’s a mixture of Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, English, French, and also has some Arawak Indian and African influences. The other players spoke Spanish. He considered quitting.

“It’s the worst thing that can happen to someone when he is 16 years old – you leave your friends and family and be by yourself and go to a place where you don’t know anything,” he said.

“It was hard, but I wanted to be professional. So I worked.”

Then, a stop in the Arizona League where Eric O'Flaherty (WI ''04 & '05) picks up the story.

The first thing about professional baseball Eric O’Flaherty noticed was that it was unspectacular. The Arizona Rookie League falls far short oof most sandlot dreams. The players arrived at the ballpark every morning at 7 a.m. still sore from the previous day, played in front of empty stands in the desert heat and then worked out. By 2 p.m., there was nothing left to do but hang out in the hotel. And then do it all again the next day. It was the first true grind many of them experienced.

The clubhouse resembled the first few days at summer camp; no one knew each other and there were periods of awkward quiet. Some were players coming in from overseas. Others were recent college draftees. Baseball was their only common element, and Balentien stood out.

“He just absolutely hit everything,” said O’Flaherty, who rose through the M’s farm system and is with Seattle. “Everything he hit was a just rocket. Everything was a blast out to right field. Down there, the ball flies out a bit, but he was hitting everything way out.”

Balentien's brief, but homer-laden season in Appleton is covered in one paragraph, but go read the whole thing.

Seattle Times beat writer Geoff Baker asks a question in this blog entry about JJ Putz (WI '00):

All Putz all the time?

An example of the slippery slope the M's have embarked on with Putz can be found across the way in the visitors' clubhouse at Safeco Field. The Blue Jays have lost closer B.J. Ryan for this entire season because of elbow troubles. Ryan hasn't been the same since the second half of the 2006 season, after he'd been used in a number of multi-inning save opportunities.

By this point last season, Ryan had been used in eight multi-inning save opportunities by the Blue Jays, not to mention another two such situations that weren't for saves. Ryan wound up saving 24 of 25 chances by the all-star break. After the break? Blew three of his first four. He wound up saving 14 games in the second-half, six of those in the final two weeks of the season once his arm had recovered somewhat from his first-half adventures. But he hasn't been the same since.

Now, let's see how Putz compares. So far, he's had seven multi-inning save chances -- only one fewer than Ryan at this point last year. Both have saved roughly the same number of games over the same timeframe. No one is saying that Ryan's current injury was directly caused by what happened in last year's second half, but the coincidence is a huge one.

The good news is that M's manager Mike Hargrove seems far more concerned by what is going on with Putz than was Blue Jays manager John Gibbons in the early part of last season. At least vocally. So far, Hargrove is doing what Gibbons did -- and that's what matters. Both men felt they had little choice but to fall back on their closers early. Hargrove last night voiced the concern that the M's have to find somebody to bridge the gap in the eighth. And he is right.

Finally today, Chuckie Hacks touches on a topic that has bothered me for a few months now...

ESPN Classic...now Classically Bad.

Now? That channel is useless. I swear they only show 5 things: Boxing, Poker, Rodeo, American Gladiators and Stump the Schwab. That’s it...almost every evening. When’s the last time they had a 2001 WS Game 7-esque game? An old AFL Championship game? The 1994 Rose Bowl? These kinds of games are seemingly off the programming list. Yeah, I’d rather watch the 1998 Wrangler Rodeo Classic from Butte, Montana than 1985 Villanova-Georgetown…yeah, right.