Who Is This Guy?

In Sunday night's game 2 of The World Series he pitched eight scoreless innings, allowing only two hits. He was simply dominant and he has been the best pitcher on arguably the best team all year. And he'll turn 42 in about three weeks. In 2006, his wins record was 17-8 with a 3.84 ERA. He only had 99 strikeouts. By comparison, Johan Santana of the Twins led the AL in strikeouts with 245 and an ERA of 2.77. Nolan Ryan leads the major league with all-time strikeouts at 5714. Kenny Rogers is #77 on that list. Kenny's career ERA is 4.19. The all-time ERA leader is Ed Walsh with 1.82. Among active players, Pedro Martinez checks in first with 2.81. On paper his numbers are average to above average. Yet he has been in All-Star with the Rangers in 1995, 2005 and with the Tigers in 2006. He pitched a perfect game on July 28, 1994. His scoreless streak of innings in this year's postseason is up to 23. I heard the announcer last night (Tim McCarver) say he was one of the best left-handed pitchers in the history of the game. Yet, somehow more people are talking about the unusual substance on his hand last night in the 1st inning that was rubbed off before the 2nd inning. Kenny said dirt. Many think pine tar. It didn't matter though. He pitched better after the 1st inning anyway. After the game, he got emotional in a post game interview and sounded like the most humble person to ever play the game of baseball. He looked like he was going to cry when he talked about his father coming to see him play and finally play well. Maybe he was talking about the 1996 World Series with the Yankees in which his ERA was 22.50, with 5 hits and 5 runs in 2 innings pitched. Or he could have been talking about his two losses and 5.87 ERA with the Mets in the 1999 postseason. Up and down he has been. And up and down emotionally too. Last night he grimaced, yelled, danced, jumped and did just about anything and everything in the emotional spectrum on the mound. In 2005, during a dispute with Rangers management and the local DFW media, Kenny assaulted a TV cameraman filming him and was booked in the Tarrant County Jail on a misdemeanor assault charge. That pretty much ended his Rangers career. And still, even in the World Series, he refuses to answer media questions from Texas news reporters. Here's one of the questions: Q: "Can you explain how much fun this postseason has been for you, 23 scoreless innings?" A: "Got another one?" Weird maybe? Well maybe not for a four year old, but a 40 year old, that's weird. And his explanation that there was "mud "on the baseball last night? Okay. Maybe pine tar looking mud. And whether it affected his pitching or not, which it obviously didn't, what about the numerous other pictures showing Kenny pitching with that same substance on his hand looking strangely like pine tar? Kenny's answer: "I explained myself last night. Anyone who wants to continue it...It's their agenda, not mine." Very true and we'll probably never know and it really doesn't matter as I don't believe it affected the outcome of the game one bit. But the guy is obviously uncomfortable on the camera. And he looks uncomfortable with the fans. Even when he's celebrating in the stands with them pouring champagne on all of them including the cops after the Tigers defeated the Yankees. "I'm not afraid to fail," Rogers says. "I know I'm 40 something and don't have a lot of talent left anyway, but I do believe in myself." The guy is one short of losing it I think and I sure don't think I'd want to hang around him. But he is a great pitcher and maybe that imbalance is what makes him great. On some people, I guess crazy wears well.

Our Great Nation: Democracy In Action With Baseball!

There are many things to be concerned about in our country. There's poverty, government corruption, war, hatred, racism, etc. But any true democratic society is under great scrutiny. I am one of those that often tends to draw attention to the problems more than I do the good. We all do it. There is good though and there is much more good than bad when it comes to our great country. Democracy is alive and well and nothing celebrates this quite like the game of baseball! Baseball was the first in professional sports to break the color barrier. Jackie Robinson stepped in to cheers and boos in 1947, long before school integration, long before Rosa Parks, long before MLK and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Baseball is for the rich or the poor. Baseball is the only professional sport that one can still buy a ticket to for around $10. For about $100 a ticket, a football, basketball or hockey fan can buy a seat in the upper deck and be reminded of their social and economic inferiority to those who sit in the lower levels in their designer clothes. At a baseball game, around $35-$45 gets you the best seats in the house. Nothing wrong with designer clothes mind you, but you don't see too much of those at a baseball game, even in the lower levels. When you play 164 games a year, there just aren't enough designer outfits to cover every game. The NFL only has 16 games. Even I have 16 designer outfits. For all of its arrogance, baseball has the strongest union in professional sports and that is democratic. Union representation, no matter what the payscale and stakes involved, gives weaker employees the ability to organize and their rights to be represented against more powerful employers. Don't misunderstand me. I'm not a fan of the major league baseball union and their counsel Donald Fehr. I do however support their idea to exist. It's democracy in action. Baseball is the only career where Alex Rodriguez can make $25million a year, be considered the best all-around individual player in the game, and then become the most overpaid, pre-Madonna in the playoffs and a player no one wants around. Only in baseball can Jason Giambi, only two years removed from the middle of a steroid scandal that has severely tainted the game, become the spokesman and a sportsman of the New York Yankees with the ability to call out Alex Rodriguez and his toughness. That is what I call a second chance. And good for Giambi. He's proved worth it. Baseball is probably the only thing President Bush and Fidel Castro can agree upon. In fact only in baseball, can a washed up pitcher become the Communist dictator of Cuba for the latter half of the last century. Only in baseball can a minority interest owner of a major league franchise go on to become Governor of Texas and later President of the United States. Only in baseball can Roger Clemens win the Cy Young Award in 1986, only to win it again 18 years later in 2004 for the 7th time at the age of 42. Only in baseball can Jose Canseco be one of the games most respected players, getting 40 home runs and 40 steals in one season, becoming league MVP, and playing on a World Championship team, to later becoming a joke and a punchline, starring in a VH1 reality show and ultimately, writing a memoir that forever changed baseball with its steroids allegations. And only in baseball can the New York Yankees, with their $200million+ payroll and a batting lineup featuring current or former all-stars up and down, lose to the Detroit Tigers, with an $86million payroll and only three years removed from losing 119 games in 2003, an American league record. Baseball brings together fathers and sons, brothers, families and couples. Everytime I go to a baseball game some guy is proposing marriage to his wife, some guy is eating a hot dog and drinking a beer that I can smell two rows back, someone is keeping score on their own scorebook, some kid is wearing a glove hoping to catch a foul ball, some vendor is yelling beer in a funny voice that makes us all laugh, some couples are on their first date, some father is with his son and grandson, and everyone is happy. Not a sport, but a church. The church of baseball. You want democracy. Support baseball.