Cleveland Sports Forum

This is a sad situation. I saw it last night, and I don't think it was intentional on Greinke's part:

Zack Greinke breaks collarbone in bench-clearing brawl

Bob Nightengale, USA TODAY Sports8:09 a.m. EDT April 12, 2013


The Los Angeles Dodgers won the game Thursday night against the San Diego Padres, but their pennant hopes certainly took a hit.

Dodgers starter Zack Greinke fractured his left collarbone in a bench-clearing brawl during the Dodgers' 3-2 victory over the Padres at Petco Park, prompting enraged Dodgers center fielder Matt Kemp to confront Padres left fielder Carlos Quentin in the clubhouse tunnel after the game.

Padres starter Clayton Richard and security guards intervened before another fight ensued.


The brawl started when Quentin was hit in the shoulder by Greinke's pitch in the sixth inning. He took several steps towards the mound with his bat, dropped it, and charged Greinke. It was the second time in four years that Greinke hit Quentin, but Quentin was intercepted by Kansas City Royals catcher Miguel Olivo and home-plate umpire Bill Hohn back on April 9, 2009, when Greinke pitched for the Royals and Quentin played for the Chicago White Sox.

This time, no one held anyone back, with Greinke, Kemp and Jerry Hairston ejected from the Dodgers, along with Quentin.

The biggest losers, of course, were the Dodgers, with Greinke sidelined for an indefinite period. He's scheduled to see Los Angles physician Neal ElAttrache on Friday. Greinke signed a six-year, $147 million free-agent contract during the winter.

"My teammate now has a broken f------ collarbone,'' Hairston told reporters. "Excuse my language, but that's unbelievable.''

Said Quentin: "It's unfortunate. It could have been avoided. You can ask Zack about that.

"For me, I've been hit by many pitches in my career. I think you guys know that. I can tell you I've never responded in that fashion, so you guys can do your homework on that. For me, the situation is done. That's it.''

Quentin was most infuriated, he told reporters, by what Greinke told him after he was hit.

"That was the final straw,'' he said.

Kemp, enraged by the incident, met face to face with Quentin in the hallway after the game at Petco Park. He followed Quentin into the parking lot and saying: "We'll see, b----,'' according to the Los Angeles Times.

"That's terrible for him to charge the mound like that,'' Kemp told reporters. "I think Carlos Quentin went to Stanford. I heard there's some smart people at Stanford. That wasn't too smart.''

Dodgers manager Don Mattingly said that Quentin shouldn't be permitted to play another game until Greinke can pitch.

"We're in a 2-1 game and on a 3-2 pitch to a guy that I see on the [score]board set a record for the Padres by getting hit, a guy who basically dives into the plate,'' Mattingly said, according to the MLB.com report. "In a 2-1 game, we're trying to hit him, 3-2?

"It's just stupid is what it is. He should not play a game until Greinke can pitch. If he plays before Greinke pitches, something is wrong.''

Said Greinke: "The only thing I'm going to say about the whole thing that happened there is I've never hit him on purpose. I never thought of hitting him on purpose.''

Quentin has long been a magnet for pitches. In 2004, he set a minor league record by getting plunked 43 times, and he led the major leagues the past two seasons, getting hit 23 times in 2011 and 17 times last year, even though he played just 86 games.

Greinke told reporters he thought Quentin's umbrage in reacting to getting hit by pitches was "a ploy" to intimidate pitchers.

"I figured he was trying to intimidate pitchers so they wouldn't throw inside,' he said.

The Dodgers and Padres play again Monday, this time, in Los Angeles at Dodger Stadium on Jackie Robinson Day.

Skankees just turned a triple play!

Pronk came off the bench to hit a pinch-hit homer, and give CC Sabathia a win.

With much of Boston's public transit systems closed as the search for the second suspect in Monday's Boston Marathon attacks continues, the Boston Globe reported that the Red Sox' matchup with the Royals, scheduled for 7:10 p.m. at Fenway Park on Friday, has been postponed.

..Carrying the burden of expectation, Manny Ramirez Jr. provides insight about his eccentric father


Wed, Apr 17, 2013 8:57 AM EDT

.....BRADENTON, Fla. –

The bat, long and thin and dipped in black paint, can’t weigh more than 34 ounces, but it is the name on the barrel – the one printed in gold – that makes the lumber so heavy. Manny Ramirez Jr. smiles as he touches the letters. For 17 years he’s lived with this name and the stares and looks and jokes that come with it until he can do nothing but shake his head. Son of Manny. That’s who he is.
Manny Ramirez Jr. has his father's work ethic when it comes to hitting. (IMG Academy)

What’s a name anyway?

“I think people might assume unrealistic things for now, but it doesn’t bother me,” he says.

Perhaps no recent baseball name other than Alex Rodriguez brings more baggage than the larger-than-life persona of Manuel Aristides Ramirez Onelcida – better known as Manny Ramirez. For almost 19 years Manny Sr. was one of baseball’s best hitting acts with a vicious swing, long home runs and a running clown show explained away as “Manny being Manny” until it wore old at each stop. Then the home runs disappeared and the suspensions for performance-enhancing drugs thundered down. When he finally walked away from the major leagues last year, Manny Sr.’s once-certain election to the Hall of Fame had become a near impossibility.

The son understands all this, perhaps better than anyone. He has lived it. The good. The bad. The roaring crowds. The darkest days. His parents broke up when he was five, but he spent chunks of summers and school vacations around his father. In 2009, when the Manny show was at its peak in Los Angeles, he traveled for two months with the Dodgers, making friends with players such as Matt Kemp, Andre Ethier and Orlando Hudson. He was 14 then, and if there were ever a doubt he would become a baseball player, it died that beautiful summer in the stadium on the hill above downtown L.A.

Now on the day of his final high school game, Manny Jr., a first baseman and outfielder, sits near the batting cages at the IMG Academy late last week. He came here three years ago with the blessing of his mother, Celia Fernandez, believing the concentration of school and baseball would better prepare him for a baseball life. He has grown to 6-foot-3, taller and lankier than Manny Sr. but also very much a mirror of his father when he first joined the Cleveland Indians in 1993. He is certain to be selected in the MLB First-Year Player Draft in June.

And maybe it is his own baseball life that has given him perspective on his father’s. He talks to Manny Sr. regularly, having just spoken to him via phone from Taiwan, where Manny Sr. is trying to revive his broken baseball career.

“I think with everything that has happened he has matured,” Manny Jr. says about Manny Sr. “It’s the reality that people make mistakes.”

His father has found God in the past couple of years. When they talk, Manny Sr. speaks about faith, the son says.

“He’s gotten really serious about it,” Manny Jr. says. “It started after he got the 50-game [suspension] in Los Angeles. People change as time goes on. He has put his faith into God. I think he was like that before, but he lost his way traveling in baseball.”

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Manny Jr. is far more open than his father, who never seemed to care for public interaction. Even as a young star in Cleveland he rarely spoke to the media, something he continued through his years in Boston and Los Angeles. The father has only withdrawn more in recent years as his skills have declined and the suspensions have jackhammered his legacy.

“I think he knows people assume things. Let them say what they want,” Manny Jr. says, explaining Manny Sr.’s public silence.

“I think he may have been a little upset because some of the players he thought were with him at the time – just like friends – he lost many of them,” Manny Jr. continues. “I feel like everybody loved him. I think there were a lot of players that tried to protect their own rather than say they supported him. It’s a shame.”

Perhaps most damning to Manny Sr.’s legacy is the fact he will probably not be seriously considered for the Hall of Fame despite a career in which he hit .312 with 555 home runs and three times led the majors in slugging percentage. But given Manny Sr.’s ambivalence about publicity, it was often hard to tell how much he cared about such honors.

“It’s one of those things where he would have liked it, but it’s not that big a deal anymore,” Manny Jr. says. “I think he’d not like his career to end in Taiwan rather than in the major leagues.”

Still, Manny Jr. says he thinks his father is happy in Taiwan and seems to have rediscovered a love for baseball. He suggests his father might want to come back as a coach but isn’t sure how or when. The thought isn’t as preposterous as it might sound.

Manny Jr. learned a lot about hitting in the time he spent with his father. It would have been hard not to. For all the pranks and the goofiness of Manny Sr., few players prepared as diligently for games. In that magical summer of 2009 as he traveled around the National League with the Dodgers, Manny Jr. was always struck by the number of hours his father put into hitting. They’d arrive at the park sometime around noon – 3 ½ to 4 hours before the time players are supposed to report. Manny Sr. would go to the clubhouse, change and immediately immerse himself into tapes of opposing pitchers. He would next go with then-Dodgers hitting coach Don Mattingly – now the team's manager – to the indoor batting cages where he would sometimes hit for two hours.

All of this Manny Jr. brought with him to IMG where he too became known as the player who spent longer than his teammates getting ready for games. For instance, he uses the wooden bat – an award from a tournament in Arizona – to take batting practice. Because the wood bat has a smaller “sweet spot” where the ball jumps off the bat, it gives him a better feel for the best place to make contact with the more forgiving aluminum bats he uses in games.

“He definitely mirrors his father’s approach when it comes to hitting,” says Ken Bolek, IMG’s baseball program director.

In a way, Bolek should know. Years ago, he was an outfield coach for the Cleveland Indians when a young slugger from Washington Heights in New York City named Manny Ramirez was promoted to the big leagues. Bolek only worked with Manny Sr. for about a month before the season ended and he left to take a job with the Cubs. But even then he got a sense of the intensity that belies the player’s outside reputation as a bit of a goofball.

Both he and IMG’s baseball coach, Jason Elias, sat down with Manny Jr. for long talks about the burden that comes with his father’s name. “Whether you like it or not, that is who you are,” Elias told him.

“You’re going to have to earn your own reputation and your chances in life,” Bolek said in a meeting with Manny Jr. a couple of years ago. “There is going to be a time when people come to see Manny Ramirez Jr. and not his father.”

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Manny Jr. is easy-going. He has a quick smile, greets strangers with a handshake and makes eye contact with his interviewers. He has his father’s short, level swing, his father’s batting stance (only slightly more open) and is starting to develop some of his father’s power. What he doesn’t have is any of Manny Sr.'s eccentricities.


Ramirez Jr. is expected to be selected in the MLB First-Year Player Draft. (IMG Academy)

“There have been zero problems with Manny,” Elias says.

Manny Jr. describes himself as a “late bloomer” as a player. His coaches have always felt he had great potential but had to find the approach that worked best. He came to the academy about three inches shorter and was a little stockier than he is now. After last season, he lost around 25 pounds, and, combined with the growth spurt, his skills have improved.

Even though he is certain to be drafted, there is some uncertainty as to the round. He has committed to Central Arizona Community College, a top-ranked baseball school, and Bolek has urged him to go there for at least a year to grow stronger and further develop his power. This last year Manny Jr. hit .366 with two home runs and 27 RBI. Bolek thinks the home run and RBI numbers can increase significantly with a year of playing with bigger and older men.

The irony in all of this is that little of the push for baseball comes from Manny Sr. In fact, Manny Jr. says it’s his mother – probably the biggest influence on his life – who has encouraged him to play. She’s the one who sent him to IMG, he says. She’s the one the coaches have met, who checks on his progress, who gives him the most support.

“My father wants me to go to college and get a degree,” Manny Jr. says. “If baseball happens, it happens.”

Told that seems strange coming from a player who never went to college or gave a public indication that school was important, Manny Jr. smiles.

“He knows times have changed,” he says.

Soon it was time to hit and then get on a bus for a ride to the last game, which was being played at the Yankees' spring training stadium, Steinbrenner Field, in Tampa. It probably won’t be the last professional stadium in which he plays. A baseball future looms for the boy with a baseball name loaded with expectation and burden.

He picks up the wooden bat and heads toward the batting cage where he'll stand just like Manny Sr. and smack line drives for as long as anyone will let him. The son, in this case, just like the father.

Second Rhino Homer For Manny

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_6zkaRymo0

Manny is doing what Manny does best - Hit.

Average is .395 (4th), Hits 17 (5th), Homers 2 (tied for 1st), Rbis 10 (3rd), Runs 8 (5th).

Mets Designate Aaron Laffey For Assignment

By Zach Links [April 21 at 8:56am CST]

The Mets have designated Aaron Laffey for assignment, according to Marc Carig of Newsday (on Twitter). The left-hander saw less than an inning of work against the Nationals last night as he allowed a walk and a double to set up a three-run homer from Adam LaRoche.

Laffey, 28, signed a minor league deal with the Mets in December. The veteran pitched to a 4.56 ERA with 4.3 K/9 and 3.3 BB/9 in 16 starts and six relief appearances for the Blue Jays last season. He also made eleven starts for Triple-A Las Vegas, posting a 4.52 ERA with 5.4 K/9 and 2.8 BB/9.

Soft tossing lefty will have a long AAAA career in all likelihood. He's had more major league time than our 1st round lefties Sowers or Huff and wasnt' there someone else of that ilk? Pomeranz still might wind up as a real major leaguer, although maybe he'll turn out to be closer to a Jeremy Guthrie than a CC Sabathia.

I see Bryce Harper is having a marvelous start to his 2nd big league season: 379 with 9 homers and 18 rbi. 453 on base pct, 783 slugging, for a modest 1236 OPS. Wouldn't it be great to come up with a young hitter like that, like we did way back in the 90s.

Hafner finishing his best month in years, 1118 OPS, Yankees' cleanup man.

Ezequiel Carrera comes to the town with the Phillies carrying an average of 077

8-24 Astros call up Trevor Crowe, among three roster moves today.

That's what I thought I read in the paper, but I see he's been with the Astros already this season. 273/333/432. 4 steals, 11K.

Never mind, these seem to be his spring training numbers. At age 29 Trevor was at AAA where he's was hitting 307/402/421 until the woeful Stros purchased his contract.

Choooooo with a walkoff homer for the Reds! It was right after Mesoroco hit one out to tie it.

Looks like Drew Pomeranz is pitching the way the Rockies expected, although still working in AAA.

39 2/3 innings
33 hits
14 walks
44 strikeouts
3.18 ERA
1.18 WHIP

He's also hitting 308 with an OPS of 742.