I May Be Wrong, But…

1.     You might have noticed if you read the 8am minors report that OF ZeErika McQueen ‘retired’ from the Savannah team. We don’t use that word that often so I thought I’d tell you some of the reasons this happens.

2.     Players ‘retire’ when the realize that they have reached the limits of their natural ability. A good example was, in fact, me. I was a great ‘street’ basketball, football, baseball, stick ball, and softball player and would usually be picked first or second when you choose up sides. This meant I reached my ego requirements and I could play on. Some kids always got picked last and it just eventually sucked too much to play that sport anymore.

3.     Players also retire when they (or their parents) convince them that they are one year of college away from a six figure job rather than be paid 15k a year to room with three guys that collectively own eight clean shirts.

4.     Some retire because they know how to do the math. 8 billion people on the earth… 30 shortstops. McQueen’s stats this year in Savannah: 19-Abs, 2-H, 7-G, .105/.190/.158/.348, 7-K. Just 7 games, which was even less than Tillman Pugh.

5.     Lastly, injuries, especial genetic ones, create early retirements. My wife has arthritis. She’s been in pain since 18. So was her mother, her grandmother, and so on. This isn’t a broken bone that can be fixed. This is one of many internal defects that simply prevent sports at this kind of level. Some players think they can beat the odds and keep playing. They can’t beat the odds because there are none. Most get cut. A few are smart enough to announce their retirement.

6.     Okay, Friday wasn’t the best night for SP Johan Santana. This wasn’t lack of control. The Cubs simply hit the hell out of his fastball and change up. 6-K and 0-BB looks good on paper, but 3-HR and 13-H doesn’t. It’s one game. Next. One thing… it seems to me that the stepping on his ankle did throw off his game concentration, so you can’t tell me it wasn’t hurting. Pain like this causes one’s brain to always concentrate some percentage to the injury, thus, there is less concentration on the pitch. Less concentration mean less velocity and movement and, in hindsight, TC should have pulled him right there. Sure Santana would have been pissed, but the Mets would have still had the lead and who knows how this game would have ended.

7.     Conrad Youngren (‘Hobie’) asked me to check on the health of ex-Met prospect, OF Sean Ratliff, whose career was cut short by an errand foul ball. I’ve lost contact with ‘Rat’ so I contacted his close friend Josh Satin for an update. Josh said: “I don't have his email contact but he is doing well. Going back to school in the fall and moving on with his life away from baseball. It's unfortunate what happened but he will be successful in his life. That I'm sure of.”

8.     I don’t want to talk about Lucas Duda. I really don’t.

9.     I’m going to the 5pm Savannah Sand Gnats game today. I put in a request last night for credentials but haven’t received a confirmation back yet. I had turned mine back into the team when I was removed from the dugout two hours prior to game time, while I was recovering from a low blood sugar.  I was still working off of the pre-John Katz rules where a beat reporter could roam the dugout area during warm-up. That has been changed to only allowing reporters on the field if you have a fixed appointment through the media director for an interview with a player during dinner time. It made no sense to me at the time since the media director actually opened the gate for me to the field when I arrived that day. Anyway,, we’ll see what happens. The least I will do is purchase a general admissions ticket and try and talk to Michael Fuller between innings. He’s working the radar gun behind home plate after pitching that gem last night.

10.                        Stats:  1,231 average page views per day… 826 unique visits per day, 58 Twitter followers (#JohnMackinAde)… 119 followers… 4 comments from two separate readers.