Baseball is the Best!

Well, this is going to be very fun and very special — next Monday, April 28, I’ll be at The Dalton School in New York for a celebration to honor the incomparable Sarah Langs. It’s going to be amazing — Sarah attended The Dalton School, and they are going all out for this one. The poster is a little bit off in that Mike is not going to actually be there (he’s going to join via video/livestream depending on his show duties) but I’ll be joined on stage by Bob Costas and Ellen Adair (whoo) plus I’m told a galaxy of stars will be contribuiting, it’s going to be absolutely amazing.

We are doing an old-fashioned “Why Baseball is the Best” PosCast draft.

I’m told they will even record it, so we’ll post it as an actual PosCast afterward … but as all of you might know, I’m skeptical about technology.

Click here to RSVP (or if you’re one of those newfangled people, you can scan the code above) … the event is free! It is going to be an absolute blast.

The New Joe’s Notebook

Some of you JoeBlogs readers have already caught on … I’ve started a new thing over at JoeBlogs headquarters called Joe’s Notebook. It’s my home for quick thoughts, musings, rants, strange stats, half-baked ideas, little celebrations and whatever else pops up. They will be short (I think, though don’t hold me to that) and timely (usually) and slightly undercooked (almost always).

If you want to check them out — here’s one I did on our daughter Elizabeth and here’s one on the Rockies’ atrocious run differential.

Stuff like that. I’ll post them randomly, however many times something strikes, and they’ll live over at JoeBlogs — no inbox clutter. If you’d like to sign up for the RSS feed (that should be the correct link; I had a broken link in the original), you can get pinged whenever something silly gets posted. Otherwise, if you want to just check in now and again, that’ll be great. Maybe every Friday, I’ll highlight a few Joe’s Notebook items (if there are any worth highlighting).

Oh, and a reminder — if you love the notebook itself, you can email the wonderful Jane at Good Postage and ask if she will create one for you. They might be sold out, but I’m sure she will work with you.

O say does this team have ANY idea?

Well, that was quite the weekend for the Baltimore Orioles. On Saturday, for reasons that I cannot begin to explain, the Orioles decided to have a David Rubenstein Bobblehead Day.

A David Rubenstein Bobblehead Day.

I’m sorry, I’m going to write this again:

A David M. Rubenstein Bobblehead Day.*

Nope. It doesn’t matter how many times I write it, it still doesn’t compute.

In general, I don’t think you EVER want to give away owner bobbleheads — even relatively popular owners. Maybe you can get away with it if you’re talking about some old coot who has owned the team for a thousand years and has won a bunch of championships and is an integral part of the community. I could have imagined, say, a Dan Rooney bobblehead in Pittsburgh or a Jerry Buss bobblehead in Los Angeles, though, honestly, part of that imagination comes from the fact that they’re gone now.

But DAVID M. RUBENSTEIN? The Orioles have not been in the World Series in 40-plus years, and he bought the team like 20 minutes ago, and his towering accomplishment so far is not spending any of his billions to actually make the team better, even though that was supposed to be the whole point since he’s reputedly a die-hard Orioles fan.

A David M. Rubinstein bobblehead. Really.

Is this a serious thing? No, of course not, everybody gets a bobblehead these days, and teams are clearly running out of ideas for promotions, and the whole thing probably cost the club $100K or so which wouldn’t have gotten them any pitching … but it does strike me as a pretty tone deaf move for an owner who is trying, desperately, to convince fans that he’s serious about this, that he’s truly in it to win it.

The Orioles beat the Reds on Saturday in front of 28,000 or so fans, which is likely what they would have drawn anyway.

But then on Sunday, the Reds spanked them 24-2, the club’s worst loss in 18 years (they lost to the Rangers 30-3 in 2007 in the first game of a doubleheader) and their second worst loss period since moving to Baltimore. I’m not saying the bizarre bobblehead was the reason. I’m also not saying that it wasn’t the reason.

Acuña May Forgive But Acuña Never Forgets

Let’s go back to 2019 — specifically to Aug. 18, 2019. Ronald Acuña Jr. was a 21-year-old phenom coming off a Rookie of the Year season, and he was playing absolutely fantastic — MVP-level stuff. He was hitting .295/.375/.537 with 35 homers and a league-leading 29 stolen bases. He was powering the Braves to the top spot in the NL East.

In the bottom of the third inning, Acuña smashed a very high fly ball to right off the Dodgers’ Tony Gonsolin. Acuña thought it was gone. It was a questionable call, admittedly — this wasn’t a no-doubter by any stretch — but you could certainly understand why he thought it was a home run. Unfortunately, the ball did not leave the park. It bounced high off the bricks above the padding in right field. And Acuña was held to a single.

He was clearly embarrassed and tried to make up for the error by stealing second base on the first pitch. Alas, the Dodgers weren’t born yesterday, and they anticipated this and pitched out and nabbed Acuña at second.

Braves manager Brian Snitker was furious … and he decided to teach Acuña a lesson. He waited an inning to give Adam Duvall a little time to get loose, and then he yanked Acuña from the game and put Duvall in.

“He didn’t run,” Snitker told reporters after the game. “You’ve got to run. It’s not going to be acceptable here. As a teammate, you’re responsible for 24 other guys, and that name on the front is a lot more important than that name on the back of that jersey. You can’t do that. We’re trying to accomplish something special here. Personal things have to be put on the back burner.”

OK. So that happened — Acuña wasn’t happy about it but he accepted it.

“I’ve always tried to play baseball hard,” he said. “It’s just one of those things that happen … (Snitker) felt that was the decision he had to make, and I respect that decision.”

Great. Everybody moves on.

Six years later, on Saturday, sixth inning, the score tied between Atlanta and Minnesota, and Jarred Kelenic blasted a long fly ball off Simeon Wood Richardson to ALMOST THE EXACT SAME SPOT where Acuña had hit his ball. I mean, it’s almost identical (though the ball looks better coming off Kelenic’s bat because he swings left-handed). And Kelenic, like Acuña, felt pretty sure it was gone, and he watched it go, and yeah, the ball bounced off the bricks.

Unlike Acuña, Kelenic tried to make up for his mistake right away by racing to second. The ball beat him there, and the tag was slapped down, but the umpire initially called Kelnic safe. The Twins immediately knew that the ump had blown the call and challenged. It was overturned. Kelenic was out.

But Kelenic was not pulled from the game. And when asked about it afterward, Snitker had a rather odd response.

Question: Did you say anything to Jarred after he watched that ball off the bat?

Snitker: Did I say anything to him? Just ‘Way to swing the bat.’ Was I supposed to?”

Well, guess who didn’t like that response at all. I’ll give you a hint: His name rhymes with Donald Shmacuña.

“It it were me, they would take me out of the game,” he wrote on social media. Then, he thought better of it and erased the post … but nothing ever gets erased on the internet.* Anyway, it’s a totally fair point by Acuña. I’m not saying that Snitker had to take Kelenic out of the game, but considering that …

• The Braves have been a disappointment so far this season

• Acuña should be returning in the next couple of weeks

• Jarred Kelenic has been a pretty dramatic disappointment, considering what was expected of him

… Snitker certainly should have had a more measured response, such as, “Obviously, we don’t want to see Jarred or anyone show a lack of hustle, and we’ll handle it in-house.” Or something like that. The “Was I supposed to?” line is what has been making the rounds, but I think the “Just ‘Way to swing the bat’” line is even more damning. That’s really what you told Kelenic after he admired a long fly ball that didn’t end up being a home run? Really? Way to swing the bat?

You can’t blame Acuña for being pretty ticked off. Snitker might want to fix that.