He’s starting…Today, so they say! …so let’s have a little fun…
reply any way you like, it need NOT be verse.
Folty starting
the mending of the ways or the parting?
Folty to start?
be still my beating heart
so absurdly pretentious
thus forever contentious.
Folty, Basil
please, minimum hasil
or we’ll tell Sybil
with whom you dare not quibble.
Basil Folty
would have preferred to pitch to Salty
in absentia
he’ll seek another from the intelligentsia.
Basil Folty
the movie version stars Nick Nolte
understandably droll
but still that awful issue of control.
Folty Basil
the sheer unknown, the razzle dazzle
we might prefer control
but if we did at what price to the soul?
There once was a pitcher, Foltyniewicz
Who got drunk on rye whiskey at Ebbett’s
When he took the hill
He took a great spill
So he thereafter stuck to Manischewitz
Still around unlike Chasen Shreve,
Did they take the “removed” and make of it his Eve?
http://m.mlb.com/news/article/167762160/luckiest-moments-in-each-mlb-teams-history
Fredi Gonzalez, beleaguered skipper
Kept the bench warm for the Atlanta Cap Tippers
With a tip o’ the cap, he saluted each loss
The Braves’ record kept clean of 2016’s dross
There once was a Mike Foltynewicz
Whose name was quite hard to pronouwicz
I felt like a ditz
At the end of my wits
When I found out that it rhymed with kzjpfzlewicz
Danny Espinosa is NOT A SWITCHHITTER.
He’s 1-18 in spring training, but then there’s this, which should put his switchhitting days to rest for good.
http://www.federalbaseball.com/2016/3/15/11241012/nationals-shortstop-danny-espinosa-gets-tmz-treatment-after-gender
Michael Foltynewicz
thought he should re-cycle faulty new bits
soon Alabamy bound
but Andrews said no, no excuse, you’re perfectly sound.
@2
cliff, what ‘removed’ please?
…see a list like this – SI’s top ten hitters percentage of home runs per swings taken- and the stats guys eyes will light up…
1. Jarrett Parker: 5.71
2. Giancarlo Stanton: 4.99
3. Curt Casali: 4.90
4. Franklin Gutierrez: 4.21
5. Mark Teixeira: 3.99
6. Mikie Mahtook: 3.98
7. J.P. Arencibia: 3.85
8. Adam Duvall: 3.76
9. Jose Bautista: 3.73
10: Mike Trout: 3.68
so will the poet’s…for 2 distinct reasons…numbers 6 and 3, their names…the muse has called.
Miki Mahtook
unless we are sorely mistook
now hits with real power
which SI records at the top of each hour.
Curt Casali
recently purchased a top of the line dirt Denali
at eighty nine five
it’s fortunate he can still hit the occasional line drive.
split squad…who knew we had enough?
both games underway, Astros game on Radio
TC says FF has taken SS deep…they have a man behind home plate
if anyone can update us from time to time ‘twould be nice..
Alex, surely you are taking the afternoon off?!!
@9
maybe he would have if the game was in DC..duh
from the previous thread…bledsoe/john
petulant/principled…it’s often a fine line and like beauty in the eye, and ear, of the beholder…none of us know in this instance…the one thing i do know is Adam La Roche is a class act and not a demonstrative one, my money would be on him…as for the other gentleman, mixed reviews we might say…
but there we go, the beholder again.
PS..DOES ANYONE KNOW IF FOLTY ACTUALLY STARTED? STILL GOING?
uh oh…
Zimmerman takes Folty Deep
quench your hopes, prepare to weep
Adam LaRoche
Congenial, never gauche
Though relief pitchers are fungible
Let it be known, we traded him for one-gible
It’s quite obvious the Braves want Folty and Banuelos in the rotation. It doesn’t look like either are ready. I don’t think Banuelos has the durability to stay in the rotation anyway.
It tickles me when Williams Perez pitch in a split squad game
@14,15
Williams are pitching like they want those two spots much, much more.
Will they make their personal catchers Willians Astudillo?
@11 This isn’t a he said/he said thing to me.
The kid doesn’t belong in the clubhouse (are there no truant officers anymore?) The club is right. If LaRoche insists that unless his kid is granted this special status of full access, available to nobody else’s kid, he won’t play, I’d happily watch him walk away and pocket my $13 million.
If a .209 hitter wants to walk away from $13 million. I say let him.
I guarantee the Sox execs were HAPPY to see him go. He’s basically their Nick Swisher.
Teammates? Not so much:
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2625496-white-sox-players-reportedly-considered-boycott-after-adam-laroche-retirement
Yeah. This is basically the equivalent of John Schuerholz coming into the clubhouse and telling Fredi and the players that a personnel-related decision that Fredi had made was no longer acceptable to the club. He probably should have gone through channels to allow his field manager and general manager to save face. Instead, he’s got a public feud on his hands.
Schadenfreude, start your engines…
The stories I’ve read indicate the white Sox have/are trying hard to talk him out of it.
It’s the idea that their decision is somehow not “family-friendly” that’s driving me bonkers. No employer would tolerate this. It’s just common sense. The notion that an entire MLB club is required to act as an all-season fantasy camp for one player’s kid, and the player’s view that this is his right, is just bizarre.
blazon at 7,
Foltenewicz had a piece of a rib removed. It is recovery from this that has kept him out of games so far. Rib, Eve, get it?
@22
I agree. I’m really not sure what’s fueling LaRoche’s frustration? Just bring it down a notch, Huckleberry.
Nick Swisher
Aficionado of Furman Bisher
Sadly, the latter is expired
The former should have long since retired
For a while there I thought we might double our win percentage by winning two games at the same time. Instead, we lost both of them. Good thing that spring training doesn’t matter. I only wish the 2016 season didn’t matter.
Spring doesn’t matter, but that doesn’t mean we will do any better in the regular season. I’m pretty sure we will be losing at nearly the same clip once the games start to count. Shame we can’t even have an ostrich race this year.
I’m on the “reasonably optimistic for the season” side, but if we have a .235 winning percentage like we do in the spring, and we’re on a 38 win pace, then I’m done watching by the third week in April. Maybe sooner.
@ 23
masterful, got it, thank you.
@22 I’ve seen no indication Adam thinks having his son there is his right. Quitting, however, certainly is. If not having that opportunity makes him want to retire, so be it. But his doing so is not the equivalent of demanding special treatment, it’s just him recognizing that he has the right to choose what to prioritize in his life.
Just read — or misread — on an ESPN crawl that The Roach had his kid’s everyday access written into his contract and that he would not have signed without it. That seems to me a strange contract stipulation; but if it is part of Adam’s contract, I understand the Pale Sox desire to make peace. They damn sure don’t want lawyers involved.
Yea, if it’s in his contract, which this is first I’ve heard that, then it’s a different issue altogether.
I’d be stunned if his contract contained such a promise. If it did, he’d just pull it out and show it to Williams and tell him to get lost. . I’d imagine at most there may have been some oral representations before or after signing that his kid could be in the clubhouse.
Congrats, AAR.
@26, Took me a minute to realize you weren’t just making a Williams Perez joke.
Thank you, man! Boola boola, and my bracket looks surprisingly good right now.
That wasn’t a fluke. They looked good.
There is buzz about the Falcons drafting Leonard Floyd, UGA, in the first round. Lots of UGA fans here–is he any good? First round good?
Folty looks just like Deadpool when he got his cancer cured in the recent Marvel Secret Wars comic event.
http://cdn.comicsverse.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Screen-Shot-2015-05-20-at-3.46.09-PM.png
ESPN tonight, Cubs/DBacks…not looking forward to seeing Jason in blue for the first time…still sad…here he comes, first pitch, grounded out to second, felt better.
Good old Adam…stick to your guns…petulant or principled?
Adam La Roche
was it really he who was gauche?
maybe his fourteen year old son?
nah, rather more likely the corporate gun.
Kyle Schwarber
was born into a Carmelite Order
which gave him a strong moral sense
but did nothing for his knowledge of the shift defense.
All this talk of his son in the clubhouse reminded me of this gem:
http://m.liveleak.com/view?i=c33_1352320565
RIP, Chris Farley
There once was a poor kid named Drake,
Whose dad was a petulant flake.
He’d get no book learnin’
But hear from those earnin’
Millions about which ‘roids to take.
@45
you are most welcome to Poets Corner…
where all of us are both principled and petulant!
…a desultory watching of late night baseball tonight happened upon the SF/SD game…
the stance at the plate looked familiar, horribly familiar…very open, high hands…
it was BJ, heaven help us…
popped up to short…deo gracias
PS…they’re STILL talking about the La Roche affair, live, on air…a story that won’t go away, still very much divided opinions…amazin’
Michelle Margaux
she’s the new girl from Fox, so you know
for 85 million
no draughty dugouts will deter this leering vaudevillian.
latest new hip slang from Enberg(Enberg!!!)…
calling opposite field home run (Kemp)
‘oppo taco’…or …’taco oppo’…can’t now remember which…does it matter?
Rene Arocha…the first defector
It’s worth noting that Laroche is the son of a big leaguer.
His experiences, both as a child in clubhouses, and in having his father gone for months at a time, surely colors his priorities as a now-professional and father.
Also worth noting, he has earned about 72m dollars in his career.
All of these things make his experience likely different from yours, bledsoe.
The most amazing part of the Laroche story is the part where he was going to get $13M to hit .200
The money in this game is just crazy.
LaRoche got paid to get on base 35 percent of the time and hit 25 home runs. Even after he lost his hitting skills, he performed at a level that fewer than a thousand people on this planet can currently match. I don’t begrudge him anything.
@ 51
and how about Swisher getting 15M to likely end up on the couch..
somehow, somewhere some front office is going to figure out how to sign a player to a long term contract that is not necessarily back loaded, or front loaded, but gives the appearance that it is both…is there an App?
@ 52
excellent summary, well said.
Adam La Roche
has called in to say he is beyond reproach
his alma mater
agreed to include his granny in their charter.
I don’t begrudge any player for making tons of money. It definitely dehumanizes them for me though.
I’m late to the party on the LaRoche thing, but I’m 100% with the White Sox. You really can’t let one player (who is not good) have that much of a special privilege, and the kid really doesn’t need to be there that often. Crazy that he’d walk away from $13M. I’d tell my kid to go home.
Yeah it seems like something that rational people could have just talked through. The butthurt seems to be coming from the fact that the front office dude handled it directly and publicly rather than letting the manager say something. If having the kid in the clubhouse was actually previously discussed before they signed him, then it’s the front office that’s to blame.
That said, I think for $13M I’d tell my kid he should be in school and I’d get over it.
The frightening specter of hooking electrodes to Frenchy’s brain at the end.
Oh, and bring on Duke, who Yale already lost to this season at Cameron. Going to see if a neutral court can improve their chances. (That said, I’m still waiting for the hockey tournament pairings to come out on Sunday. Yale is the Official Braves Journal college hockey team, but I lack the effrontery to try and foist the bouncing ball Bulldogs on y’all.)
@ 48
oppo taco
for those who still insist on banking at Wells Faco
taco oppo
this is all really just too much, de troppo.
LaRoche can walk away from the game for this reason, a better one or a worse one. Or no reason at all.
My main argument has been the absurdity of his demand from the perspective of the club, whose sole purpose is to win baseball games and who has no responsibility to give “life lessons” to player’s sons or indulge their fantasies that they’re big leaguers.
But the sanctimony of his argument that this is HASHTAG! Family First is also annoying:
1. I’m pretty live and let live about how other people raise their kids. But the government isn’t. The only reason that LaRoche gets away with taking his kid to his job for eight months a year is that he’s a wealthy MLB player. If you or I tried to do this, we’d be in a Child Protective Services hearing in a flash. I made the mistake of asking to take my kids out of school at Thanksgiving for three extra days to go to Hawaii, and the word “sheriff” came up in the conversation.
2. The logical conclusion of LaRoche’s stance is that he’s a better dad than the other hundreds of major and minor league players who are also fathers and don’t have this absurd demand and make their kids go to school. He’s not, anymore than a guy who demanded his wife get a locker next to his would be a better husband. Indeed, in order for LaRoche to show what a good dad he is, it requires all the other dads to not insist upon the same privilege for their kid. Hashtag Hypocrisy.
3. Outside of bars and casinos, I can think of few environments that are less appropriate for a kid to learn “life lessons” than an MLB clubhouse. Unless your role model is Richie Rich the Poor Little Rich Kid. Hanging around 25 millionaires who get paid for playing a child’s game and are often noted for poor judgment both inside and outside the clubhouse is not where a lot of valuable “life lessons” are to be found.
4. The club did not “ban” the kid, as I’ve read in a dozen articles. They asked that instead of 100% presence it be dialed back to 25% or so. Yet Laroche is now implying that this is a unforgivable assault on “family values.” Yeah, that’s sanctimonious and absurd.
Adam is lucky that he doesn’t have to play anymore if he doesn’t want to. Just don’t spin the White Sox taking away a privilege that virtually no other parent in America has as some sort of attack on the American family.
@61
I totally agree.
The White Sox can’t allow this kid to be a defacto member of the team. What if one of these players was deemed to be inappropriate with the kid? In a room full of guys between the ages of 20-35, it could happen. The Sox would be leaving themselves open to a lot of stuff.
Secondly, being the kid of a pro athlete is like being the kid of a president. Sure, there will be a lot of missed events and a lot of times when you have to read and listen to negative things about the parent, but you are open to an experience that trumps a lot of it. You get to be apart of something only a small group of people ever has been. If a few people manage their money correctly, three to four generations of this family may never actually “have” to worry about money.
I don’t think Ken Williams should have been the one to have made this call though. It should have been done through the manager. On top of that, the manager shouldn’t have let this even happen. If he wants to let the kid be a bat boy, fine.
I guarantee Bobby Cox would have never had allowed this.
My bet is that multiple players complained and Ken Williams felt forced to do something. The White Sox are complete idiots for letting this happen in the first place (and for signing Laroche at all, lol)
@63 yes, I’ve read stories implying that teammates didn’t like it yet didn’t want to be the Guy Who Hated The Laroche Kid. And that KW took the job of being the ogre. Plausible.
And is there anything at once more tedious, sanctimonious, and solipsistic than saying that someone’s “experience is different” than someone else’s? It’s a surefire way to shut down any discussion of any topic, whatsoever, if nobody can say anything intelligent about it because the actors involved have, quite obviously, “different experiences” than those offering their opinions. Vomit.
@61/62..
…in all that’s been said and written about this – and will likely to continue to be for some time, it’s struck a nerve – has anyone heard anything or know anything about the custodial relationship if any between Adam and his son? For all i know he may be happily married and have been so for ever, blah blah. But, if he is in one of those awful joint custody things then figure this through that eight month season. Things change somewhat. Half of that time he’s on the road, the argument is irrelevant. When they’re back home he can exercise his contractual rights i guess. Whatever, rounding up, it’s not 100, not 25, but 50 per cent of the time. As much as that matters it helps a bit to understand all this and, to repeat, this may all well be hypothetical, i hope it is.
Smitty, good piece but it ended on a jarring note. Bobby Cox is the last person on earth you would want to be allowed any involvement with anything regarding family law.An admitted wife beater, a pattern of violence over a period of years. While some of his ejections at the Park were considered funny maybe and some deliberately tactical in others the loss of temper control was frightening. Transfer that to a nightly domestic scenario and you feared for her. Yes, at the time. Less Earl Weaver, more OJ. To use a sports metaphor. Which i should not be doing.
Smittys right. As one of the biggest Bobby Cox haters on this board, I will say his one true gift was running a taut, professional clubhouse. It’s the in game stuff he was horrible at.
When it dawns on this kid that his dad could have paid him, I dunno, half of the contract to just to go to school, he’ll be pissed.
“Kiddo, I know it’s going to be tough to go to school for the next six months. No kid wants to go to school. But what if I paid you a million a month to do it? Would that make things better? Daddy’ll be home when I’m released in late July and we can play a little catch when I get back.”
@ 59
advanced analytics
Macbethian witches, their potions, their physicks
bubble, bubble
whatever it is it’s a great deal of trouble.
@65 – Pointing out that his experience is different from Bledsoe’s is not to say that he is right or that Bledsoe is wrong, or to ‘shut down the conversation.’ It’s a reminder than maybe we can’t characterize the actions of people we don’t actually relate to as if we do, and arrive at value assessments such as “petulant.”
We don’t know how important that time with his son is to Laroche, we don’t know how clear that was made to the club at the time of negotiations, we don’t know how seriously the club took those concerns of his, we don’t know if it cost him money to go to a club that would agree to his non-monetary demands, and we don’t know how firm the club has been in private regarding their change in policy. And “I can’t imagine that x y or z is the case,” doesn’t eliminate x y and z from being possibilities. We can all say what we would do. I don’t think it’s fair to take the next step and accuse some kind of character flaw because the actions of a stranger don’t line up with what you imagine you would do.
Adam Laroche isn’t living his life in response to yours. He’s living the life that his skill and associated negotiating power allows him to live. That doesn’t make him petulant, it doesn’t make him greedy, and it doesn’t make him a saint. He is afforded certain options (bringing his kid to work, leaving $13m on the table) that we are not, and those options change a persons priorities. That you can’t relate doesn’t make you right and him wrong.
I got no beef with you, jj. I just disagree.
And neither I you, bledsoe. I was replying to JohnWDB’s existential frustration.
@ 67
and the ‘in the home stuff’ you might agree? you could look it up, and of course you have.
i didn’t know there were any admitted Cox haters on this board, count me in. What did you mean exactly by ‘in game stuff’? Tactics/decisions etc? For me, in purely baseball terms, i cannot countenance one world championship out of 14 with the pitching he had to work with. And then he compounds it throughout that same period with that awful self serving cliche – it’s all a crap shoot you know, the post season…no it’s not, pure nonsense, 13 times over.
LaRoche thread is up.
stentorian calls
from the umpire whose manner appalls
community service
for this overweight,wobbly, wannabee dervish.
Top comment from another forum:
“This report is not accurate. After batting .207 last season, the White Sox have asked Drake LaRoche to quit bring his dad to the clubhouse.”
Yeah, in game decisions, raging from lineups to bullpen use to putting on plays. I think he was terrible, and there’s 15 years of my rants on this board about it. It’s a minority view.
@70, actually, despite your wall of text, I have taken a moderate position here, and I believe that both Bledsoe and blazon have valid things to say on either side of this argument. Saying “your experience is different” is expressly meant to invalidate bledsoe’s valid perspective. But what annoys me most is that it’s condescending, priggish and self-serving–meant to show how much more deeply nuanced and non-judgmental your perspective is. Well, vomit.