Hall of Fame baseball writer Hal McCoy is in his 36th year of covering the Cincinnati Reds, the longest tenure for any active writer covering one team. Counting spring training and postseason games, McCoy has covered more than 7,000 major-league baseball games, written close to 18,000 baseball stories and eaten enough hot dogs to give Babe Ruth indigestion.Home > Blogs > The Real McCoy | Cincinnati Reds baseball news > Archives > 2008 > May > 11
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Lost in New York
For a report on Seattle’s interest in Ken Griffey Jr., so much interest that one of the Mariners’ executives was in New York watching Griffey, check out the previous blog entitled: “Seattle checking out Griffey.”
For a report on the Cincinnati Reds weekend, “Lost in New York,” read on and weep.
They lost two of three to the Mets and the third game was most disconcerting. Johnny Cueto, 22, pitched to his age - again. And it is a concern. He is 2-4 with a 5.91 ERA and one wonders how much of spring training’s greatness was a mirage.
Maybe Cueto isn’t quite ready for Prime Time. He wasn’t ready for the bright lights on Broadway (or at least the dull old dirty lights of Shea Stadium - the dump that is about to become an official trash pile under a wrecker’s ball, although it already is a junkyard).
The Mets jumped on Cueto in the first inning with a barrage of line drives that screamed to the outfield with the same decibels as the planes that sometimes swoosh over Shea en route to LaGuardia.
Two doubles and a triple produced three runs and the Reds played the rest of the way as if they had one foot in the bus for the trip home. Of course, Oliver Perez was keeping the bus door shut.
He beat them for the ninth time in his career, striking out eight in only six innings. Perez is just like Houston’s Roy Oswalt. Both could sit cardboard cutouts of themselves on the mound and the cardboard would pitch a three-hit shutout with 12 strikeouts.
Manager Dusty Baker blamed Cueto’s ugliness on New York stage fright, but he was just as ugly in St. Louis, where there is no stage on which to get frightened. Baker and Cueto’s guru, Mario Soto, both agreed that Cueto’s problem Sunday was throwing pitches over the heart of the plate, or as broadcaster Jeff Brantley calls it, “Right down Broadway.”
Jeff Keppinger, who had five straight hits Sunday, added two more in his first at-bats Sunday, plus a walk, to give him eight straight appearances on base.
Then Wright State’s Joe Smith, one of the nicest kids to walk the streets of Flushing, struck out Keppinger with two on and two outs in the eighth.
Did I mention that this team carries home an odor similar to that which one smells upon walking inside Shea? And it has nothing to do with the stadium. Right now, this is a team of disparate parts. Nothing fits. Walt Jocketty has a ton of work to do.
While the Reds got to go home Sunday night, I get to spend the night here, so my recently found luggage can at least spend one night with me.
That, of course, depends on me finding the hotel. With my eye meds in my bag, I was seeing worse than normal (which is like a bat during the day) when I got off the subway Saturday night at midnight and wandered out an unfamiliar exit. Somehow I turned the wrong way and when I saw the Port Authority Bus terminal, a building I’d never seen in 36 years of coming to NY, I knew I was lost. And not in prime real estate, either.
I stubbornly refused to hail a cab, fearing I might be only a half-block away and would be mightily embarrassed. So I walked. And walked and walked and walked. For an hour. Finally I discovered 42nd and 9th and knew how to get to 45th and 7th from there.
If my plane makes it all the way to Dayton tomorrow and doesn’t turn back, as did my flight from Dayton to New York, I’ll be ecstatic to be back in Ohio. The worst part? We have to come back here in June to play the Yankees. I can hardly wait. I love self-flagellation.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Post your comment |
Seattle looking at Griffey
If the Cincinnati Reds truly are interested in trading Ken Griffey Jr., well it appears the Seattle Mariners are more than interested.
Seattle’s Duane Schafer, a special consultant to the general manager, is in New York this weekend and his express assignment is to watch Griffey play.
“Don’t know him and never heard of him,” Griffey said with a shrug Sunday morning as he laced his pink-trimmed black shoes with pink shoe laces as part of Breast Cancer Awareness Day by players throughout the major leagues.
“As I’ve always said, I deal with the here and now and I’ve never been a what-if person,” said Griffey. “The problem is that by the time they come to the players (who have the right to say yes or no to a trade), it is at the point where they want a ‘yay’ or a ‘nay’ right away.”
One problem for Griffey. While they regard him as a deity in Seattle, Griffey said he wants to win a World Series ring and Seattle is no closer to doing that than Cincinnati is. And he left Seattle to be closer to his Orlando-area home and he couldn’t be any farther away from home than Seattle.
“Been the longest week of my life,” said Griffey, referring to last week’s death of his best friend, Frank King. “Every time I call home, my wife Melissa is still crying.”
On another front, Adam Dunn was in Sunday’s lineup, but he was in excruciating pain from an ingrown toe nail on his right big toe.
“Never ever had one of these in my life,” he said. “Man, it is on fire.”
And for those wondering, yes, my luggage showed up Saturday night, just in time to accompany me back home. I found it with the hotel bellman after I got off the subway, took a wrong turn and wandered in the Times Square area for about 20 blocks before finding my way home. Just another story from The Big City.
But I did find a vendor selling shish-ka-bob sandwiches with hot barbecue sauce. Yummy - and a night of heartburn.
Permalink | Comments (8) | Post your comment | Categories: Adam Dunn, Ken Griffey Jr.
