Here's some background music to enjoy while reading this post.
In case you missed it, Tim Redding apparently says via XM that Mike Bacsik grooved the home run pitch to Bonds. Stolen from Chris Needham's blog:
JC: You were with the Nats the night that Bonds broke the career HR record. What was that atmosphere like? Wasn't it Mike Basik or somebody who gave it up?
TR: You know, I don't like to speak ill of people...Mike was a nice guy and a good teammate....but Mike wanted to give up that HR. I was charting pitches that night for my start the next day and it was super obvious that he wanted to give it up. Everything to Bonds was low 80's and center cut. I think Mike had some notion that if he gave it up, he could be part of history and make a few dollars out of it one day.
Bacsik fired back on his Twitter page:
Well just got a call from Bill Ladson of washingtonnationals.com and Tim Redding said he believes I tried to give up homer#756 Good teammate
If somebody would have asked me, what teammate will say you tried to give up a homerun? After laughing my answer would have been Tim Redding
For everyone on my page that needs a denial; I didn't try to give up the homerun. I was crappy enough to do it without trying.
@57Healey Thanks. It irks me though that a teammate would say that. Skip Bayliss who cares, but Tim is saying I cheated the game. Just mad
Interesting to note Bacsik's background on said Twitter page.
My wife and I were visiting our daughter the night it happened. I was watching the downstairs TV, the "girls" (wife, daughter, roommate) were upstairs. I hollered up and said, "Turn on the TV. It is going to happen now."
Don't know Redding. Don't know Bacsik. Would bet everything I own he grooved it. Everything. You? Hey, I was looking for an easy poll this week and there it was, handed to me on a platter. I need more days like that.
Last poll: 80 percent of the voters say sign Hudson. Four voters say play Guzman. One wants Kennedy signed, one wants Harris (not me) to play. No love for Gonzalez. Eighty percent of voters sounds better than 24 voters, since only 30 voted. So much for my goal of getting 100 votes one week.
How's the Caravan? Good thing they didn't come to Richmond. It's supposed to snow.
7 comments:
The caravan is hitting a lot of chili places up here. Stick your head out the window, take a deep sniff and I'm sure you'll get a good whiff of the blowback from it down there.
As for Bacsik, all he needs to say is "Of course I didn't groove that pitch. My pocket-size sample tubes of the cream and the clear both just happened to run dry right before I threw it."
The Nats-Hudson dance seems to be a line-for-line rerun of last year's Nats-Dunn dance. I predict the same ending for it. So did Jon Heyman last night on MLB Network.
What's fair for Hudson? Nine mil does seem high. Three mil does seem low.
They gave Pudge 2yr/$6M and Marquis 2yr/$15M. I could see them giving Hudson 2yr/$10-$12M. Once he comes to the realization that he's not going to get $9M from anyone (and he'll have to figure that one out pretty soon), a second year should look pretty attractive to him. Surely he doesn't want to be doing the FA dance again next year for like the third year in a row. And with Guzman gone after this year, the Nats will still have a need for Hudson next year - even if both Desmond and Espinosa arrive.
Just sign Hudson. Please. Your pitchers will thank you, your fans will thank you. He'll generate more than the 6mill you pay him in wins/attendance. Just get it done.
Re Bacsik- It doesn't make sense to me that Bacsik would grove the 7th pitch of the at-bat if he wanted to be famous. It would have been that 3rd pitch which, if you read Barry Suvulga's (sorry for butchering the spelling) piece in NJ, even the Giants play-by-play described as a perfect pitch. If he wanted fame it would be ball, ball, over the middle. Or ball, ball, good pitch, HR-express. Not ball, ball, perfect pitch, really good pitch (fouled), good pitch off the plate, really good pitch off the plate (swinging), HR. That's a lot more work than is worth it for giving up a home run to a steroids-fueld HR hitting machine. Also, I don't give Bacsik that much credit as a pitcher to have the control to intentionally make pitches 3-6 un-hitable, only to "disguise" his purposfully bad pitch 7, without walking him. I think he was trying to get the K and, being the bad pitcher he was, left it over the plate. Just my opinion, but it doesn't add up to me.
Sass - everything you say makes perfect sense, of course. I still believe it was a groove job. Just something about Bacsik's personality (and his Twitter background) that leads me to think that.
The guy wasn't a very memorable pitcher. This may be the only way anyone ever remembers he was in the big leagues.
And while he wasn't a very good big-league pitcher, he WAS one so by nature he's more capable than your average Joe. Just as the worst golfer on the PGA Tour would look amazing next to the rest of us, the worst pitcher in big league history can still do things with a ball most can't.
Also, got this e-mail from someone who was around the team that year (not Svrluga), someone whose judgment I trust 100 percent:
grooved it. there were 24 other people in that locker room that knew he grooved it, but only one of them actually said it on the radio.
In that case, was Barry in on it? Or Schneider? Did he know to wait for a late-in-the-count pitch ahead of time, so he knew to foul off that ball that dribbled down the 1B line instead of taking a real hack at it to see what happens?
I don't mean this sarcastically (and I hope it doesn't come across that way). I wonder if your trusted source let you in on whether it was a full blown conspiracy (see: Strahan, Michael and Favre, Brett), or just one man's plan that worked perfectly?
Who knows who was in on it? Ball Four (I think) talked about some wink-wink arrangements. Could have been a few, could have been just one. Or I could be full of crap. But I'll stick to my story to my grave.
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