Everyone remembers the scene in "Who's The Boss" when Tony is playing for his Softball team and tries to leap over the catcher at home plate, right? Well Tony Danza was actually tagged out on the play, and while many others have succeed in the "catcher leap", I don't think I've ever seen this move before.

We shall call it the "Oops, I missed home plate, but la la la....GOT YOU!" move....

That was Durham Bulls Center Fielder Fernando Perez and that's about the slickest move I've ever seen. It's like the anti-Pierzynski. I know it has nothing to do with announcing, but I hadn't seen it anywhere else, and I thought you'd enjoy it.

Silly me, I thought the WNBA fight was entertaining. What happens when there are multiple incidents in one inning, two managers who are ready to throw down and a pitcher that is currently in jail?!?! Ladies and Gentlemen I give you the Dayton Dragons and the Peoria Chiefs. LET'S PLAY THE FEUD!!!!

I'd normally praise a good basebrawl but the dickhead pitcher that tried to hit the opposing dugout ended up nailing a fan in the stands. That fan was with his wife and two kids and is now in the hospital....

Via WTDN: "Both benches cleared when Chiefs pitcher Julio Castillo fired a baseball toward the Dragons dugout. The ball missed the dugout, and hit a fan sitting in the stands.

It took several minutes for Dayton police officers to calm the melee. Castillo was arrested and booked into the Montgomery County Jail. He faces a felonious assault charge.

The brawl delayed the game for one hour and nine minutes.

Baseball fan John Isenbarger said, "This is the most insane baseball game I've ever been to. It was complete chaos."

Via ABC22 In Dayton: The hit fan was taken to the Miami Valley hospital conscious, no word yet to the extent of his injuries. He had come to the game with his wife and two children.

So we know why the guy is in the Minors, but seriously....he should never pitch again in any league. Unbelievable.

(posted by OMDQ)

ALmost everything about this display of umpiring power is humorous, but I'm keeping a special place in my heart for the reaction of the security guard. That kid was on the ball.

Steve Phillips was not a fan of Phillip Wellman's excellent managerial tirade this weekend, noting on Baseball Tonight this evening that, "It's not about entertainment, it's about teaching these young men how to act."

With all due respect, Steve, you are only half right. Yes, part of a minor league baseball manager's job is to help the players on his team, many of whom are young guys in their early twenties, learn how to act appropriately in a variety of settings. In that regard, Wellman probably could have done a little better - very few awkward social situations involve the throwing of either a resin bag or a hand grenade.

As Stephen A. Smith might say, HOWEVA - to suggest that entertainment should not be a primary goal of any minor league baseball team is ridiculous, and watching a manager throw a temper tantrum is among the most enjoyable things that can happen during a stoppage of play. Why shouldn't we embrace it as a few minutes of good old fashioned fun, so long as nothing gets out of hand?

--OMDQ

I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest that maybe, possibly, this manager was unhappy with the home plate umpire's interpretation of the strike zone:



Thank you to Sports Bastards for putting this clip in front of me right now and inspiring me to break down this gentleman's performance after the jump.

The Approach: Normally, I prefer arguments that start with the principles behaving in a somewhat civil manner before someone insults someone else's mother and things get ugly. In this case, however, the full on rush into the umpire's personal space is warranted because the manager was ejected before he left the dugout. I like to think he would have taken it more slowly, but was able to adapt to the situation when necessary. Nice work.

The Classics: Managed to work in the hat throw, home plate dirt cover, and the base toss. Actually, it might have been base tosses, but a cut in the video prevents us from seeing what actually happened to the bags. One second he has them in hand while stalking off the field, the next he's empty-handed and blowing kisses to the crowd. Obviously, we need more video of this event.

Originality: Using a resin bag as a hand grenade? Who ever saw that one coming? And to lead into it the way he did? Possibly over the line, possibly brilliant. Either way, easily worth a 17 out of 10.

Overall Rating: According to the Mikulik Scale, a 7.9, pending resolution on the fate of those bases, which could potentially up the already stellar originality score. Even with all the question marks, however, this was still a quality managerial temper tantrum.

Has a minor-league pitching prospect ever generated this much ink after one mediocre start? Some clown named William Clemens made his first start for the Yankees A-ball affiliate in Tampa, and the newspapers are going nuts about it. I mean, sure, he helped the Texas Longhorns win a national championship, but at his advanced age, how do we even know he'll be any good? His numbers weren't that great, after all, but the organization is hurting for pitching, so he'll be moving up to the double-A Trenton Thunder in time for a Wednesday start.

Why are the journalists who cover the Yankees' farm teams so excited about this old man? Find out after the jump.

OK, I've had my fun. It could have been interesting to see what the New York papers are saying about Roger Clemens, but I thought it would be WAAAAY more fun to see what the papers that cover Yankee affiliates have to say. I mean, they're about to be touched by the hand of the almighty Rog, right? It's not often anyone reads about the Trenton Thunder even in Trenton, so readership has to be sky-high for some of these fellas right now.

The Tampa Tribune already HAS a MLB team to write about, but the Tampa Yankees just handed them the biggest story they've had in years. Martin Fennelly drew the lucky straw, and got to write about prima donna moments like this one:

The Hummer that he rode in on was parked outside a few hours before Friday night's Single-A game between Clemens' Tampa Yankees and the Fort Myers Miracle. We don't mean outside Legends Field. We mean outside the Tampa clubhouse door, in a hallway inside the stadium. It's good to be the Rocket.

And Martin, that card, really had me going with this description of a pre-game moment with a local youth.

Clemens let little Nicholas put resin on his hand and had a hug for the youngster after the national anthem. Clemens, the father of four boys, was reportedly so enamored with the tyke that he offered to purchase him from the Ketterer family for $2.3 million.

The best part, though? Attendance at the A-ball game was 10,257. The announced attendance at Tropicana for the Devil Rays/Marlins interleague dustup was 13,003. That's right, "the show" came thisclose to playing second fiddle to a rehab start. Read the rest here.

Thanks to the parent club's horrendous injury situation, it looks like we're not going to be able to keep Roger down on the farm for long. The talk is that Wednesday will bring his debut for the Trenton Thunder (try not to choke on the exhaust from Rocket's Hummer as he roars out of town Thursday morning, Trentonians!)

Apparently, everybody in Trenton wanted a piece of this story, because this piece is attributed to "Staff and Wire Reports". Either that or nobody in Trenton knows how to write a column - I don't know.

This sentence has a local flavor to it, however:

He's slated to make his next one in a Thunder uniform on Wednesday night at Waterfront Park against the Portland Sea Dogs.

Holy shit! The Sea Dogs? That is a hot, hot rivalry. Look for Rocket to challenge Aarom Baldiris early by throwing high and tight. There is no love lost between these two warriors.

Also, I'd like to introduce the most terrifying mascot I've ever seen.

Donnie Collins at the Scranton Times-Tribune can see the writing on the wall - the Yanks need pitchers, and Rocket is not known for his patience, so the Greater Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area might get skipped on the Yankee farm tour. However, I would like to seriously thank Mr. Collins for not just adding a one-paragraph tag to the wire story and calling it a day. He actually had some amusing lines.

In a nutshell, Clemens gave up a towering home run to a sweet-swinging lefty outfield prospect named Erik Lis, who wasn’t quite 2 months old when Clemens made his big-league debut against Cleveland in May 1984. He also gave up a line-drive double to smallish second baseman Toby Gardenhire, who is known more for being his father’s son — that would be Minnesota Twins manager Ron Gardenhire — than for the .171 batting average he was packing before the game.

and this nugget:

If we were handing out grades for Hall of Famers pitching against unproven youngsters who had only ever seen him in video games before, Clemens could make a case for a very stout B-plus. He will make another minor-league start, most likely at Double-A Trenton on Wednesday. A repeat of what he did Friday, and selling him on another workout in the minors might be like trying to get Donald Trump to buy a Ford Focus.

Whoa, where did the Trump reference come from? Unnecessary. In case you hadn't heard, Roger himself has two Hummers, and he's allowed to park them on the warning track if he so desires. I don't think he'll be buying a Focus either, rendering your stretchy simile moot, Mr. Collins. Still, a very stout B-plus for making an effort.

And, finally, a man who sports one of the sourest official byline photos I've ever seen, the New York Post's Kevin Kernan. He doesn't give a rat's ass where Clemens pitches on his way back up - he likes the way Rocket is taking the time to mentor some of the youngsters as he goes.

The Rocket not only went through one of his typical workouts that included everything from his abdominal crunches to tossing a football, but for the first time, he was able to take Junior Rocket Phil Hughes under his wing. Hughes will earn a Master’s Degree in power pitching from Clemens over the rest of this season.

Clemens spent close to 30 minutes on the mound with Hughes, going over the finer points of his delivery. At one point Clemens got down in the dirt and drew a line, showing Hughes the proper landing spot for his right foot. Clemens also demonstrated the proper arm slot, release point, leg balance, and positioning of hands in the stretch.

If he fixes Igawa, I say the Yankees owe him another $20 mil.

And, just in case you're wondering, four of the six Yanks affiliates are also called the Yankees. Man, those guys know how to ruin everything, even the smorgasbord of fabulous monikers that is Minor League baseball. Thank goodness for the Charleston RiverDogs.

I have been your host, Extra P.

Minor league baseball is, at heart, all about novelty. The majority of fans are not drawn to the ballpark by player relationships, but by good prices, good promotions, and the promise of fun and entertainment.

Thanks to Bill Veeck, who revolutionized the way baseball was marketed, and his son Mike, who has followed in his father's footsteps, the game has seen a huge surge in the creativity displayed by event staffs across the nation. From Jack Kerouac bobblehead dolls to Office Space Night, teams everywhere are trying to be the first to come up with something no one has ever thought of before.

Last Sunday, something happened in St. Paul that went largely unnoticed. The Saint Paul Saints, run by Mike Veeck and long renowned for cooking up the best promotional events in baseball, presented the "Saints Largest Promotion Ever". The gimmick? An official at-bat for 7'3" Milwaukee native Dave Rasmussen, who is believed to be the tallest player ever to appear in a professional game (Randy Johnson, Eric Hillman and Chris Young are the tallest major leaguers, at 6'10Jon Rauch is the tallest major leaguer, at 6'11"). The Public Address announcer was kind enough to note that "strike zone is so big, it has its own zip code!"

Wearing uniform number 73, Rasmussen struck out on three pitches, immediately placing him second behind Eddie Gaedel (the 3'6" batter who walked on four pitches for Bill Veeck's St. Louis Browns in a 1951 game) on the list of performances by players of uncommon size.

Fortunately, there's video. It starts slow (two whole minutes of small talk and generic promotions such as that weird Sumo Wrestling thing teams like to do) but improves around the 2:40 mark, when Rasmussen walks onto the field and immediately proves that he had never before held a baseball bat.



~Weekend Editor: One More Dying Quail