Cardinals’ new version of Gas House Gang

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO – They were called the “Gas House Gang,’’ the 1934 St. Louis Cardinals, people such as Leo Durocher and Ducky Medwick, ballplayers who would just as soon knock you over as win the game. “I come to beat you,” was a Durocher warning.

The new Cardinals, the 2012 version, can still play that roughhouse style, can still barrel into an infielder to try to break up a double play and perhaps break an opponent’s bones, the way Monday night Matt Holliday crashed into the Giants’ Marco Scutaro on a slide in the first inning.

A slide that sent Scutaro, the San Francisco second baseman, out of the game eventually, a slide that angered Giants manager Bruce Bochy, a longtime baseball man who rarely seems upset about anything.

Yes, the Giants won the game before a raucous sellout crowd of 42,679 at AT&T Park. They defeated the Cards, 7-1, and so the best-of-seven National League Championship Series, which resumes Wednesday in St. Louis, is tied at a game apiece.

But Scutaro, with a sore hip where Holliday rolled into him like an offensive tackle might a linebacker, successfully breaking up a double-play attempt, is facing an MRI and could face a game or more of inactivity.

“I think they got away with an illegal slide there,’’ said Bochy, his voice tight. “The rule was changed a while back. And (Holliday) really didn’t hit the dirt until he was past the bag. Marco was behind the bag and got smoked.”

And lay there to the right of the bag for a while, then got up and in the fourth singled home two runs. After the fifth, however, Scutaro, picked up late in the season from the Rockies, was replaced by Ryan Theriot. Scutaro was seen leaving the ballpark before the final out.

“It’s a shame somebody got hurt because of this,’’ said Bochy. “And that was more of a roadblock. (Marco) got hit pretty good.”

It’s also a shame the incident came to dominate a game that in another way was dominated by Ryan Vogelsong, who went seven innings and threw 106 pitches, finally giving the Giants their first solid performance by a starter in seven postseason games.

He not only got the victory but the support of fans chanting, “Vogey, Vogey, Vogey.’’ After those same fans rocked the park with boos every time Holliday came to the plate following his first-inning take-out slide.

“We’ve got our second baseman hurt,’’ Bochy pointed out when someone sensed his irritation. “And again he was behind the bag. You’re all for playing hard, but again, hoping for good news with Marco. He got a big hit, but he was hobbling. It got to the point where he said ‘I can’t move out there,’ so we had to take him out.”

After Holliday figuratively had taken him out.

Brandon Crawford, the Giants shortstop, had fielded the ball hit by Allen Craig and thrown to Scutaro to force Holliday. “It was pretty late,” Crawford said of the slide, “but I don’t think Holliday is a dirty player.”

Asked if he were surprised by Holliday’s contact, Bradford said, “I’m surprised Scutaro got off the throw to first.” Which Craig beat. But then Vogelsong retired Yadier Molina on another grounder.

Cardinals manager Mike Matheny, as expected, defended his player. He could do nothing else. Teams are taught to support their own, right or wrong.

“I didn’t see a replay,” explained Matheny, who as Bochy is a former catcher. “But as I watched it live, it looked like it was a hard slide. It didn’t go out of the baseline to get him. We teach our guys to go hard. Play the game clean, play it hard, not try to hurt anybody. We go hard but within the rules.”

Giants fans could be kind, their team finally winning a home playoff game. Back in the seventh game of the 1934 World Series, Medwick slid hard into third baseman Marv Owen of the Detroit Tigers. The two fought, Detroit fans showered Medwick with garbage when he went to left field and the commissioner of baseball, Kennesaw Landis, ordered Medwick removed from the game.

The incident Monday night had no chance of escalating into that. Holliday, in fact, was somewhat apologetic.

“In hindsight,” he said, “I wish I had started my slide a step earlier. It was happening fast, and you’re trying to get him so he can’t turn the double play.”

He couldn’t, of course, and the crowd turned on Holliday, but as the Giants broke away the mood changed. It was back to the AT&T staples, mugging for the video screen and singing along with Journey in the eighth inning.
   
“He’s a great player,” Holliday said of Scutaro. “He’s a good guy. I was trying to keep us out of a double play.”

RealClearSports: Pujols Will Make Angels Resonate in Hollywood

By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

They've always been the other team, the outsiders, for 50 years, their entire existence. They changed ballparks, changed logos, changed names.

They played in Dodger Stadium, calling it Chavez Ravine, and now they play in the suburbs, calling themselves the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, which is as absurd as saying the New York Yankees of Long Island.

When they weren't anonymous, they were the punch line of jokes...

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2011

RealClearSports: McGwire Slinks Back into Baseball

By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

OAKLAND -- He is emerging from the mist, rejoining society, rejoining baseball. Mark McGwire returns and where that could lead, dare we say Cooperstown, is yet to be determined.

McGwire became a near recluse, wanted to stay as far as possible from another question, another interview, another critical story.

He lived in a gated community in southern California's Orange Country, hung around with those who had the good sense not to be inquisitors and played as much golf as possible.

The votes came in for the Hall of Fame, and McGwire, who at one time, before the steroids, before the painful appearance before Congress, would have been a certain inductee, was rejected. And rejected a second time.

You can think what you wish, but McGwire belongs in the Hall. So does Barry Bonds. So do others whose performances were worthy.

The steroids, the artificial enhancements, were part of the late 1990s and early 2000s, part of baseball. They made players better, but they didn't make stars out of failures.

In time we will realize that. What Mark McGwire presumably realized is that he wants dearly to be in the Hall, and to do that he needs to rehabilitate an image that has been pounded as he once pounded the ball.

Or maybe the Hall of Fame is of no concern. Maybe McGwire decided he needed something in his life, an assignment, a challenge.

So here he comes, a few days past his 46th birthday, connecting with the man who managed him, first with the Oakland A's, then with the St. Louis Cardinals, Tony LaRussa. When LaRussa signed once more with the Cards, he brought along as his hitting coach Mark McGwire. And why not?

McGwire was always shy, hesitant to face the press. He became part of the A's "Bash Brothers'' almost by accident. He could hit home runs, but it was Jose Canseco, the extrovert, who hit the jackpot with the media. McGwire wasn't a bad guy, just a reluctant guy, at the opposite end of the clubhouse and the spectrum from Canseco.

At Damian High School in LaVerne, some 30 miles east of Los Angeles. McGwire even skipped baseball one semester to join the golf team. He was an independent sort. At USC he pitched, but when you're 6-foot-5 and 225 pounds, the future is as a slugger. Sorry, hitter.

The 1987 season in Oakland, when he was Rookie of the Year, following Canseco, who earned the award in '86, McGwire hit 49 home runs. No artificial enhancements. Just natural ability. And yet he would tell writers, "I'm not a home run hitter.''

He wasn't any kind of hitter in 1991 when, unhinged because of family troubles, McGwire dropped to a .201 average. But he recovered quickly enough, and the photos of him and Canseco smacking forearms became familiar.

Retirement came after 2001. McGwire was out of sight until that painful 2005 hearing before a House committee when, asked whether he had played "with honesty and integrity, he responded, "I'm not going to go into the past or talk about my past. I'm here to make a positive influence on this.''

Refusing to address allegations against him and other players in Canseco's tell-all book, McGwire explained, "My lawyers have advised me I cannot answer these questions without jeopardizing my friends, my family and myself.''

He took the Fifth. And he took a whipping from the media. Presumed innocent until guilty? McGwire was presumed guilty until innocent. And then he went deeper into seclusion.

Wright Thompson of ESPN.com chased after McGwire a couple of years back, and wrote a wonderful piece with interviews from old pals and ex-USC teammates, but nothing at all from McGwire himself.

"He just wants to slink away,'' Ken Brison, son of a former McGwire Foundation board member, told Thompson. Well, now he's unslunk.

Now he's agreed to put on a uniform and advise people with bats in their hands how to make contact while, one supposes, doing his best to avoid contact with journalists.

The game will be better off with McGwire as part of it. McGwire will be better off. Baseball cherishes its past, even the unfortunate parts. Triumph and figurative tragedy are ingrained. Willie Mays is a frequent visitor to San Francisco's AT&T Park, Tommy Lasorda a regular at Dodger Stadium. Barry Bonds has showed up now and then at Giants home games and was all over the place during the recent Presidents Cup international golf matches at San Francisco's Harding Park.

Mark McGwire is back. Maybe Barry also becomes a batting coach. Maybe it doesn't help their Hall of Fame chances, but it certainly doesn't hurt.

As a reporter since 1960, Art Spander is a living treasure of sports history. A recipient of the Dick McCann Memorial Award -- given for his long and distinguished career covering professional football -- he has earned himself a spot in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He was recently honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the PGA of America for 2009.

- - - - - -

http://www1.realclearsports.com/articles/2009/10/27/mcgwire_out_of_the_mist_and_back_in_baseball_96515.html

© RealClearSports 2009