2016 MLB thread. THE CUBS HAVE BROKEN THE CURSE! Chicago Cubs are your 2016 World Series champions

[vtotheinay]

He's not being asked to respect the Diamondbacks, just Gonzo. And if he doesn't know who he is, that's pitiful.

how is it pitiful? i heard multiple reporters say today on tv and radio that MLB games were not even shown on TV in Cuba until this year when Puig started doing well. How is he supposed to know who luis gonzalez is if he's never watched Major League Baseball before?

 

[lpheat22]

He's not being asked to respect the Diamondbacks, just Gonzo. And if he doesn't know who he is, that's pitiful.

Isn't Cuba pretty much cut off from all things USA, I wouldn't doubt that he legitimately doesn't know who Gonzo is, it's not like he was a huge international star either.

Puig doesn't wanna talk to anyone besides Dodgers personnel and his teammates, nothing wrong with that.

Ya he talked last night with the media and I don't blame him he went from no attention to all of a sudden everyone wants to know every detail of his life every interview i'm pretty sure it's frustrating especially when all you want to do is play good ball and have fun with your teammates. Yes he does need to work on his media skills because he can't use these excuses forever but for now people should cut him some slack.

 

[lightweight champion]

How do you expect to make it to the MLB if you don't know it or it's players exist?

 

[madj55]

Oh really?

Who did I leave out? Jay-Z and Robbie Cano? Sure, he'll talk to them too. Quite frankly if I was a pro I wouldn't wanna talk to the media either. No matter how nice you are too them they'll jump at the first chance to twist your words around on you.

 

[lpheat22]

How do you expect to make it to the MLB if you don't know it or it's players exist?

Ok now you're just playing dumb. Of course he knows MLB exist he probably doesn't know specific players. Do you know any specific players from the Japan? Who was the guy who last got a game winning hit in their championship series?

 

[jewbacca]

There are a lot of American born players who have no idea about any baseball history lol

I don't think it's fair to expect Puig to know who anyone is.

 

[clyde the glide]

How do you expect to make it to the MLB if you don't know it or it's players exist?

by hitting home runs, stealing bases, fielding well.  u have clearly never been around real high level athletes.  the best ones r quite often not fans so this doesn't surprise me nor is it newsworthy.  like cam said i dont like rap i just do it cuz im nice

 

[dland24]

How do you expect to make it to the MLB if you don't know it or it's players exist?

Ok now you're just playing dumb. Of course he knows MLB exist he probably doesn't know specific players. Do you know any specific players from the Japan? Who was the guy who last got a game winning hit in their championship series?

Knowing specific players in Japan is in no way the same thing as knowing specific players in the Major Leagues.  Come on man. 

 

[dland24]

For the record, I have no issues with Puig not wanting/not being able to speak to the media.  I just dont see how him not wanting to speak to the media and do interviews is lumped into this situation with Gonzo.

The former Diamondbacks star introduced himself, and began relating how his family also had roots in Cuba, just like Puig.

Except Puig wouldn't even look up or acknowledge his visitor. And for the record, Gonzalez was speaking Spanish, so nothing was lost in translation.

This isn't Puig not wanting to speak to the media.  Its him being a d***, and not giving another person the time of day.  Two totally different issues.

 

[certifiedflyboi23]

Who did I leave out? Jay-Z and Robbie Cano? Sure, he'll talk to them too. Quite frankly if I was a pro I wouldn't wanna talk to the media either. No matter how nice you are too them they'll jump at the first chance to twist your words around on you.

Man tell that to Barry Bonds, him being a jerk to the media made them attack him harder when he was going thru things. Be nice to the media you never know when you're gonna need them on your side...

 

[freddie black]

Take it FWIW but this guy @THEREAL_DV is refuting, for lack of a better word, the way the encounter was originally reported.

Freeman and Delabar with the last two All-Star spots.

Alvarez replacing CarGo in the HR Derby.

 

[Johnny_Cakes]

Puig has the right to not engage with Gonzales, just as people have to right to shape their opinion of him because of that. There is no "he should" or "he shouldn't", take him for what he is and make your judgment and move on. What's the point of getting angry?

 

[lightweight champion]

by hitting home runs, stealing bases, fielding well.  u have clearly never been around real high level athletes.  the best ones r quite often not fans so this doesn't surprise me nor is it newsworthy.  like cam said i dont like rap i just do it cuz im nice

Don't give me this horse****. The best ones are not fans? MJ's favorite player wasn't David Thompson? Kobe's favorite wasn't Magic growing up? Bonds didn't idolize Mays? Tyson didn't admire Dempsey? Tom Brady didn't root for Joe Montana? Gretzky didn't want to be like Gordy Howe?

The point is, you don't get to a place in life without knowing anything about it. A lot of people aren't going to know what Kirk Gibson's career was like but he'll always be remembered for his walkoff against Eck in '88. Nobody will aspire to be David Tyree but he'll always be linked to the catch against his helmet in the final minutes of the Super Bowl. Derek Fisher had his moment with 0.4 and Joe Carter had the series ending title clinching walkoff against Mitch Williams in'93. A lot of players will never be considered amongst the best ever, but they can still have their moments that live in sports history. Luis Gonzalez, of Cuban descent, had his in '01 off Mariano Rivera.

Or am I wrong and guys like Jose Canseco, Rafael Palmeiro, Livan Hernandez, El Duque and Tito Fuentes just ignorantly made it to the bigs?

 

[lightweight champion]

Man tell that to Barry Bonds, him being a jerk to the media made them attack him harder when he was going thru things. Be nice to the media you never know when you're gonna need them on your side...

Bonds' personal issues with the media stem from them insulting his father for alcoholism during and after his career. Barry loved Bobby and it was his way of sticking it to the media. I think it's hypocritical for them to stick it to him for sticking it to them for offending his family.

 

[mr marcus]

idk.......he's from cuba so its possible he didn't know about gonzo

and maybe he doesn't like all this attention he's getting......and I'm sure the pregame slurping from opposing people is kinda annoying

but in the end we're getting caught up in espn cooking up **** 

 

[jumpmanfromdabay]

What a punk

 

[airjordan jb23]

even considering gonzalez & his resume, i wouldn't put it past puig that he legitimately didn't know who he was since he most likely didn't get to see many MLB games in cuba... not only that but as mentioned, with all this hype around him & media all over him, i can see why he looks to only interact with the dodgers.

i mean, if he knew who gonzo was & straight up ignored him, that's a cold move but i personally give him the benefit of the doubt.

 

[tommyicerocking]

Gonzo is also a Cuban....decent......

.......

 

[651akathepaul]

by hitting home runs, stealing bases, fielding well.  u have clearly never been around real high level athletes.  the best ones r quite often not fans so this doesn't surprise me nor is it newsworthy.  like cam said i dont like rap i just do it cuz im nice

Don't give me this horse****. The best ones are not fans? MJ's favorite player wasn't David Thompson? Kobe's favorite wasn't Magic growing up? Bonds didn't idolize Mays? Tyson didn't admire Dempsey? Tom Brady didn't root for Joe Montana? Gretzky didn't want to be like Gordy Howe?

The point is, you don't get to a place in life without knowing anything about it. A lot of people aren't going to know what Kirk Gibson's career was like but he'll always be remembered for his walkoff against Eck in '88. Nobody will aspire to be David Tyree but he'll always be linked to the catch against his helmet in the final minutes of the Super Bowl. Derek Fisher had his moment with 0.4 and Joe Carter had the series ending title clinching walkoff against Mitch Williams in'93. A lot of players will never be considered amongst the best ever, but they can still have their moments that live in sports history. Luis Gonzalez, of Cuban descent, had his in '01 off Mariano Rivera.

Or am I wrong and guys like Jose Canseco, Rafael Palmeiro, Livan Hernandez, El Duque and Tito Fuentes just ignorantly made it to the bigs?

?

American players looking up to other american players isn't the same. Nor is your idea that a requisite to be a professional athlete is to know so much about its history and its players. Some are real fans of the games they play, but there are more than a few who grow up not focusing on learning players and teams, but rather just going out and playing. And that's so much the case for those in foreign countries.

One last thing...It's Luis Gonzalez. Hell, many american fans around Puig's age probably don't even remember the guy let alone a Cuban defector. If we're talking Griffey or Bonds then that's different, but not Luis flippin' Gonzalez.

 

[jjs07]

Andrus/Beltre are hilarious to watch in the field.

 

[steelcity412]

Thank God el torro is gonna be in the derby now

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20130711&content_id=53460210&vkey=pr_mlb&c_id=mlb
 

 

[freddie black]

Andrus/Beltre are hilarious to watch in the field.

A lot of the humor stems from Beltre's aversion to his head being touched.  Andrus has just taken the role of antagonist to a new level.

This goes back to when he was with Boston.

 

[johnnyredstorm]

wrote a follow up to my Cubans and Baseball piece I posted a few pages back.

http://frankcesare.blogspot.com/2013/07/baseball-on-earth.html

Baseball on Earth

Spoiler

In America, the road to professional baseball is easy to travel for those few talented individuals: Attract scouts in high school, choose the university or junior college interested in you, apply for the draft at age 18 and weigh your options. If you choose to sign with the team that drafted you, you head to the minors. If you go to school, you're inelligble for the draft until your 21st birthday or the conclusion of at least your junior year--unless you attended a junior college in which case, it didn't matter how many school years you completed .

That path to the Show wasn't illuminated in the other countries occupying planet Earth, however. As you know from my earlier piece Cubans and Baseball, Cubans interested in playing professionally needed to flee their home island in order to do so. Aroldis Chapman, the Cincinnati Reds lefty flamethrower, made it to the majors as early as he did thanks to a tournament in the Netherlands.

While in his hotel room in Rotterdam, Chapman decided to defect without telling anyone. He walked out of his room, through the lobby and into a car where his new life began. But in doing so, he left behind more than his old life. His defection meant separating himself from his parents, sisters and pregnant girlfriend that gave birth to the daughter Aroldis still hasn't seen.

Not everyone left their entire lives behind when moving to America to pursue their professional baseball dreams, though. As a member of the Montreal Expos, Vladimir Guerrero had his mother live with him in his apartment and when free agency struck, he told suitors he could only choose the city they both felt comfortable in. Having grown up in poverty in the Dominican Republic, and subjected at times to drinking puddle water, humility flooded Guerrero, brandishing him shy in the eyes of the American media.

But that shyness existed simply because Vladdy, even as he aged, always remained in tact with his youthful ways. His favorite scouting report against a pitcher was the one he made, hitting against the scheduled pitcher's character in baseball video games. That was obviously a joke of Guerrero's, seeing as how it didn't matter if he knew anything about the pitchers he faced. The man swung at just about anything and somehow found a way to connect with consistency; which could be attributed to his childhood in DR, where he swung a broom handle at the bottle caps pitched to him.

Guerrero finished his Major League career with a .318 batting average to go along with 449 home runs and 1,496 runs batted in. He was also the 2004 American League MVP his first year in Anaheim for the Angels. That season he batted .337, hit 39 HRs and drove in 126 runs. He earned over $125 million playing baseball in America--a pretty decent amount for a shy kid born in the Dominican Republic.

There were many Latin players like Guerrero, that lived through harsh times and found solace in throwing, catching and hitting a baseball. Some grew up with milk cartons for gloves and waited and dreamed daily of a scout passing through their village, witnessing the heat fly out of their hands or the unmeasurable distance they drove the ball. Others participated in the baseball camps and academies offered throughout their countries. Those academies were in place to make it easier for teams to find the next great hitter or pitcher, but since some of those academies were privately funded, investors would take a percentage (sometimes upward to 50 percent) of the signing bonus of the lucky players that caught their big break.

To some Americans, baseball was only a means for profit but elsewhere on this planet, others revered and respected the game. The Japanese valued the sport differently and filled it with ritual. Games could end in ties, and every seventh inning was the balloon release where fans held long balloons, sang their team's song and released the balloons in the air for luck. In a way, Japanese baseball was on par with European soccer, with how loud and passionate their crowds were.




Yu Darvish, starting pitcher for the Texas Rangers, pitched professionally in Japan before entering the Major Leagues. He was regarded as the best pitcher in the eastern hemisphere and brought as much awe as Aroldis Chapman did when scouted.

Since Darvish played in the NPB (Japan's version of the MLB), he had to be posted (think being placed on a transfer wire) in order to come to America. The posting system was simple: One would be posted and the MLB would hold a four day silent auction in which teams bid for the exclusive right to negotiate with the posted player. The team with the highest bid would have 30 days to negotiate a contract with the player, and if an agreement was reached, the bid would go to the posted player's NPB team as compensation for the transfer. If a contract couldn't be reached, the player's rights reverted back to his NPB team and no fee was paid, regardless of the amount bid.

Ichiro Suzuki came to America under the posting system after having spent eight years in Japan. He, like Darvish, was able to maintain productivity in his new environment, but that wasn't always the case. Some Japanese ball players came to the Majors and found themselves as shells of their former selves, i.e. Kei Igawa whom the Yankees bid just over $20 million for and signed to a five-year $20 million contract.

Coming to a new country, possibly alone, was sometimes the reason for supposed stars not panning out. Other cases it was the level of competition. Although the NPB was filled with great players, the best of the very best were in America. Hence partly, as I'm sure the lucrative contracts contributed mightily, guys like Ichiro and Darvish came to the States.

Baseball was one of the most complex sports on this planet, and like soccer, it was one of the more popular sports that could be played cheaply wherever there was space--giving youngsters in poverty the opportunity to live the American way.

 

[lpheat22]

Andrus/Beltre are hilarious to watch in the field.

Ya those two look like bros just out there messing with each other

 

[JD617]