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Tales about the Ohio Cup

By Hal McCoy | Friday, May 16, 2008, 03:05 PM

It is no longer the Battle of Ohio/Baseball. Once again it is the Ohio Cup.

It’s a rebirth and probably means the same to the players of the Cleveland Indians and Cincinnati Reds as it did in its genesis.

Nothing.

It started before interleague play. Somebody came up with the idea of The Ohio Cup for spring training. The Reds and Indians scheduled their last spring training game in Columbus, one game for the not-so-coveted Ohio Cup - winner takes the actual trophy home for a year.

One year a pitcher named Tim Birtsas was to start The Ohio Cup - he was called Big Bird by his teammates because he sort of looked like Big Bird, minus the yellow feathers.

Anyway, somebody asked him about being fired up about pitching The Ohio Cup and he said, “Ohio Cup? What’s The Ohio Cup, a boat race?”

The only person who cared about The Ohio Cup was Marge Schott. She was angry one year when the Reds lost, 1-0, on a cold, rainy day when all the players swung at the first pitch, just to get in out of the wet and chill. The game was 1:56.

One year the Indians won The Cup and asked for it. Nobody knew where it was. It disappeared. So did the annual game. Where was The Cup? When Schott died, they found it piled among trinkets in a room at her Indian Hill home.

There is another story floating around that the Indians had The Cup in their offices one year when two guys walked in and asked for it. A receptionist said, “It’s right there.” The two guys picked it up and walked out the door and nobody cared to stop them.

Maybe Marge hired them.

Now it’s back, sponsored by the Ohio Lottery. I won’t even ask Johnny Cueto and Edinson Volquez about the importance of the Ohio Cup. None of the Cleveland writers was aware of its rebirth.

The Indians pitched lefthander Jeremy Sowers Friday night, a name familiar to Reds fans.

General manager Jim Bowden had no money in the budget to pay for a No. 1 draft pick in 2001. Sowers told everybody who would listen that he was going to Vanderbilt University and wouldn’t sign, if drafted. Knowing that, Bowden seized on the opportunity to make a No. 1 draft pick he knew he couldn’t sign.

So he drafted Sowers. Sowers didn’t sign. Went to Vanderbilt, as promised. And the Cleveland Indians drafted him out of Vanderbilt. And he signed.

Now he gets to pitch in the all-unimportant Ohio Cup game.

There was no talk of The Ohio Cup in the Reds pre-game clubhouse. Ken Griffey Jr. sent a clubhouse boy out to purchase two grocery bags full of Wendy’s burgers for hungry teammates before batting practice.

He unwrapped a new glove and said, “Give me a break tonight on defense. I’m breaking in a new glove tonight - my third one in a week. None of ‘em feel good. I thought it was my hand, but I think it’s my gloves.”

Nobody believed he would wear a brand new glove in a game, so we’ll be checking.

If they need The Ohio Cup game timed, Kent Mercker was the man. He was walking around the clubhouse carrying the biggest watch in captivity - a grandfather clock with a strap. And probably the heaviest. It weighs a pound-and-a-half and Francisco Cordero (Yes, it was Cabrera in an earlier post. I have a mental block on his name and have called him Cabrera before. Cordero, Cordero, Cordero, Cor….) said, “You gonna wear that thing? You won’t be able to lift your wrist.”

Said Mercker, “I’m going to wear it when I run, like weights on your wrist. Hey, I was watching Buy-NBC one day at 1:40 in the morning and they advertised it. Only $2,500. It’s a cool watch.”

Everybody in the clubhouse seemed happy about Thursday’s postponement, a night off. Everybody but Javier Valentin. Even Mother Nature is against him. He was supposed to start at first base, his first start in a game since April 16 - one month ago.

“See ya next month,” he said.

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Killing time while it rains

By Hal McCoy | Thursday, May 15, 2008, 04:21 PM

Kent Mercker figured the Reds wouldn’t be playing tonight.

“I saw Noah buying wood and nails and my dogs are gone, so I figured, ‘No game,’ ” he said.

He was right. With rain predicted until close to midnight, the game was called at 5 o’clock and probably will be replayed August 18 - an off day for both teams, pending Players Association approval.

And what do the players do while the Ark is being built in center field?

Well, there was a card game in the middle of the room - an indoctrination for rookie Paul Janish. He played with Adam Dunn as his partner against Ryan Freel and Ken Griffey Jr.

Janish hesitated to make a play and Griffey said, “C’mon. If you think long, you think wrong.”

He did think long and played wrong. When he made his play, Dunn screamed, “Why didn’t you play the queen? Why didn’t you … DAMN!”

The conversation switched back toward Mercker’s side of the room and somebody mentioned how dumb and tough this year’s schedule is, just as it was last year.

Said Mercker, who sat out last season after Tommy John surgery, “Last year’s schedule was beautiful. Tee time at 8:15, happy hour at 8.”

With the rain and the threat that it will continue all night, somebody wondered how many fans might show up. Then it was mentioned that Class AAA Louisville outdrew the Reds-Marlins on Wednesday night.

“That’s understandable,” said somebody in the background. “Louisville has better players.”

And let me take a timeout at this point to thank Scott Priestle of The Columbus Dispatch. I wore a new pair of pants Thursday because I was going to be filmed in a documentary. I left a cellophane size tag running up and down my leg and Priestle told me about it.

You know, I think I wore those pants one other time — plastic strip included.

When I told Mercker I was “dressed up” to do a film documentary, he said, “Who’s doing it?”

“Some guy from New York,” I said.

“Well that narrows it down to about 10 million people,” he said.

With the game banged (baseball lingo for called off) Manager Dusty Baker said Thursday’s scheduled pitcher, Matt Belisle, will be skipped to keep everybody on rtheir turn.

Belisle will pitch Tuesday in Los Angeles and five days later in San Diego after doing a side session in the next couple of days.

“I know he wants to pitch, but we want to keep our pitchers on their regular schedule, especially Aaron Harang, Edinson Volquez, and now that Bronson Arroyo is doing well, we need to get him back on schedule,” said Baker.

Time to go do the documentary. Hope there is no price tag hanging from my shirt.

By the way, when Baker sent pitcher Johnny Cueto in to pinch-run for David Ross in the 10th inning Wednesday (Cueto scored the winning run on Janish’s single), he was going to send in Edinson Volquez.

Of all people, Edwin Encarnacion stopped him.

“First time I heard him speak in a week,” said Baker. “But he said, ‘No, no. Not Volquez. Cueto is faster.’” So I sent in Cueto and said, “Just don’t get picked off.”

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Janish a big hit — literally

By Hal McCoy | Wednesday, May 14, 2008, 09:22 PM

Let’s talk mostly about good stuff because there usually isn’t much good stuff to talk about.

Let’s get this out of the way first. The negative baloney — the 6-0 lead the Reds had in the ninth inning Wednesday night before Mike Lincoln and Francisco Cordero gave up six runs, enabling the Marlins to tie it, the tying runs coming off Cordero on a three-run homer by Cody Ross (a member of the Reds for about 30 seconds two years ago).

It was Cordero’s first blown save this year. End of gloom, doom and sadness.

The Reds came back to win it, 7-6, with a heart-pounding finish. It was rookie Paul Janish, called up Tuesday night after Jeff Keppinger broke his kneecap, who ended the game with a single to right field, driving in pinch-runner Johnny Cueto (should the Reds be using valuable pitching beef to run the bases?).

What a story. Janish gets the game-winning hit in his second major-league at-bat. And a bloody nose from a teammate in the raucous celebration.

“I’ll take another bloody nose tomorrow if we can win it again,” said Janish, who came into the game in the eighth for defensive purposes and was the offensive star.

“It’s hard to explain the feeling, and I could say I hope it only gets better, but that’s pretty hard to beat,” said Janish. “It was pretty ideal. The bloody nose was well worth it, and I’d doing it again tomorrow if I got the chance.”

Manager Dusty Baker said he not only felt Janish would come through, he predicted it.

“Like Yogi (Berra) always says, ‘It ain’t over ‘til it’s over,’ and he ain’t lying,” said Baker. “To get a game-winning hit in your first major-league game? That’s heaven-sent. I said in the dugout, ‘Janish is going to win this game.’ You know, sometimes it’s your day and circumstances couldn’t be prevented because it might have been his day. It certainly was his day.”

It was starter Bronson Arroyo’s day, too. Then it wasn’t. It was his 6-0 lead that Lincoln and Cordero spit up, costing Arroyo a win. But his effort was magnificent.

Remember in St. Louis when Arroyo won a game and revealed that he added swimming to his workout routine, you know, “Swim to win.”

He wouldn’t say it, but after his one-run, four-hit effort Saturday in New York I wondered if the day before he swam across the East River and the Hudson River?

Then before his start Wednesday night against the Marlins — on only three days of rest — I spotted a large bag of dog food in front of his locker, something called Innova, and I asked, “Change your diet?”

He laughed and said, “That’s for my dog. I share custody.”

Then he took custody of the Great American Ball Park grass and treated the Florida Marlins like Yorkies — no runs, five hits, two walks, five strikeouts.

“I felt stronger as I went along,” said Arroyo. “I’ve been working out harder and I just feel like I can manage the game with 120 pitches and still be strong enough to beat guys in the seventh and eighth innings. I really couldn’t prior to a start in St. Louis.”

And he was performing on only three days of rest instead of the usual four.

“Three days rest? I think you feel better,” he said. “The command is there, you feel strong. You haven’t had that much time off and first thing you know you’re back on it again and that’s great. I was happy with seven zeros, that’s for sure.”

Florida came to town on a seven-game winning streak and in first place in the rugged National League East. The Reds have now whipped them three straight times, tying their longest winning streak of the year (3), done once before when they took three straight in San Francisco.

Are the young, no-name Marlins impostors? Is this the start of something big for the Reds?

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150,000 pennies for your thoughts

By Hal McCoy | Wednesday, May 14, 2008, 03:20 PM

You’ve heard of Three Coins in a Fountain, right? How about 150,000 pennies in a locker?

That’s what Josh Fogg found in his locker when he came to work in the Cincinnati Reds clubhouse Wednesday. There were 60 boxes of pennies, $25 worth to a box, stacked in his locker — top to bottom like cereal boxes in Kroger’s.

Fogg immediately looked at Ken Griffey Jr. and said, “That’s good, Griff. That’s funny. Kick me while I’m down.”

Griffey had told Fogg he was going to pay off the $1,500 he owed him in pennies, but Fogg didn’t believe it.

“I’m a man of my word,” said Griffey. “And when you owe a man $1,500, you pay him. And I’d like to thank the lovely people at National City Bank for helping me with this joke. There isn’t a whole lot you can do with pennies. Just think, each box weighs 16 pounds, so the man has 60 bowling balls in his locker.”

Fogg was mystified and mesmerized and finally said, “I’m going to take them out to the bullpen and count them. I have a lot of time on my hands out there. I’m sure these were delivered by Brinks truck and Griffey had his paycheck in there, too.”

THE MRI on Jeff Keppinger was as expected. His kneecap is fractured. Estimation of healing time is four to six weeks. And for those who asked about shortstop Alex Gonzalez and his broken knee, he still can’t run and is a long, long way from playing fitness.

Paul Janish, called up from Louisville arrived at the ballpark at noon and wasn’t in Wednesday’s lineup. Jerry Hairston Jr. was at shortstop.

“We’ll ease him in,” said manager Dusty Baker. “Hairston is playing well and hitting. Janish will be used in double switches and for defense and he will start some games. I’ve talked to (Louisville manager) Rick Sweet about his hitting and we’ll get him in there when we think he has the best chance to succeed.”

Said Janish, “I’m fired up and antsy. Didn’t get much sleep last night. But I’m ready to go.”

MARLINS FIRST base coach Andy Fox has a quaint hobby. Before every game, he uses a stop watch to record the length of the national anthem and records them in a log.

Well, the Reds set a Fox record Tuesday when anthem singer Brandi Kegley took 2:32 to sing it — two seconds longer than Fox’s recorded record. Her rendition was excellent and wasn’t given any personal interpretations — as so many anthem singers do — but she stretched out each note and attained the record.

SPEAKING OF oddities, the Marlins and Reds are the only teams in baseball (we think) with cheerleaders. Florida’s are the Mermaids. The Reds are the, er, Reds Cheerleaders.

BRANDON PHILLIPS must not be mad at me any more. Before Tuesday’s game he said, “Excuse me, Hal,” as he ran past me in the tunnel. And later he answered my question about shaving off his Mohawk-style haircut.

WORD OUT OF Seattle is that the Mariners have no concern over the $8 million they’d have to pay Ken Griffey Jr. the rest of this season if the acquired him now and the $16 million option for next year with a $4 million buyout.

When you want something — really, really want something — money is not much of a deterrent, is it?

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Keppinger fractures knee

By Hal McCoy | Tuesday, May 13, 2008, 09:17 PM

Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad news.

Shortstop Jeff Keppinger fractured his left knee in the second inning Tuesday night. X-rays showed the fracture and he’ll undergo a more detailed MRI Wednesday morning.

Keppinger fouled a ball off the knee in the second inning and gamely remained in the game, but left after the third inning.

That leaves the Reds with two broken-kneed shortstops. Alex Gonzalez has missed all season with a broken left knee.

The loss is disastrous to the Reds because Keppinger was, by far, the most efficient, productive and enthusiastic participant - witness his playing an inning on the fractured knee.

Her was hitting .320 with three homers and 20 RBIs after going 8 for 12 in a three-games series in New York.

Jerry Hairston Jr. took over at shortstop and at the moment is the natural replacement for Keppinger.

But the Reds most likely will call up shortstop Paul Janish from Class AAA Louisville, where he is hitting .289, but has no major-league experience.

The Reds have made no announcement, but Janish was pulled from the Louisville lineup tonight after he batted twice and drove in two runs against Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.

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What’s a team to do?

By Hal McCoy | Tuesday, May 13, 2008, 08:57 PM

Let’s forget Josh Hamilton, OK? Yes, he is good. Damn good. He is the hottest thing in Texas this side of a branding iron.

But he’s gone. He is no longer with the Cincinnati Reds.

Concentrate on what the Reds received in the trade - arguably the best pitcher in baseball right now. Edinson Volquez IS the branding iron.

The Reds traded Hamilton for him and received exactly what they hoped they’d get. Except they got more.

I get message after message: “Why didn’t the Reds trade Adam Dunn for him? Why didn’t the Reds trade Ken Griffey Jr. for him?”

Plain and simple. The Texas Rangers did not want Adam Dunn. They did not want Ken Griffey Jr. They wanted Josh Hamilton and Josh Hamilton only. To get Volquez, that’s what the Reds had to give up.

Everybody always proposes outlandish trades. If they are Reds fans, they want to dump the malingerers and malcontents and miscasts onto another team for that team’s best players.

Let’s trade Corey Patterson and Scott Hatteberg and Javier Valentin to Houston for Lance Berkman. Yeah, right. Houston is going to say, “OK, and we’ll throw the Alamo into the deal, too.”

That’s why Hamilton is gone and that’s why Volquez is here, dazzling the baseball world with 95 miles an hour fastballs and deceptive change-ups that wrap hitters into human pretzels, with or without mustard.

He was at it again Tuesday night against the first-place Florida Marlins, who tried to approach him as if their bats were sticks and they were trying to beat a snake.

He went six innings, slowed only by his pitch count of 110, giving up one run (as always) on seven hits. He has made eight starts this year and given up one or fewer runs in all eight - the first pitcher to do that since Oakland’s Mike Norris in 1980.

“That’s some big-time company there,” said manager Dusty Baker. “What I like about Volquez is his will to win. He wills himself to win.”

His changeup doesn’t hurt, either.

His only real problem was the fifth inning when the Marlins scored one and had the bases loaded with two outs, and were down only 3-1. Dan Uggla, arguably Florida’s best hitter right now, went down swinging.

“Probably my best pitch of the night,” said Volquez. “A changeup.”

Speaking of problems, the Reds are likely to be missing shorstop Jeff Keppinger for a long time - too long. He fractured his left knee in the second inning when he fouled a ball off it.

Tough customer that he is, he played for another two innings, without crutches, before he told Baker, “No more. I can’t go any longer.”

An X-ray revealed the fracture and an MRI Wednesday will show how serious it is.

“That’s a big loss, a big-time loss,” said Baker. “You have two choices. You can feel sorry for yourself or you can figure out a way to get the job done.”

A call was immediately placed to Louisville and shortstop Paul Janish, who had two hits in two at-bats and two RBIs, was immediately pulled from the game. He is hitting .293.

Tlhe Reds would admit that Janish is coming up, but Baker said, “He is a top candidate. He is a slick fielder, a real slick fielder. And he has some pop in his bat, especially on high fastballs.”

So what does a last-place team do when it loses its best players?

With one-fourth of the season gone and three-fourths dead ahead, we shall see, won’t we?

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Stories from the clubhouse

By Hal McCoy | Tuesday, May 13, 2008, 04:48 PM

It wasn’t Ken Griffey Sr. being a Little League dad. He didn’t rush to Cincinnati from Orlando on Tuesday because he heard his kid wasn’t playing.

In fact, Senior didn’t know it when he walked through the clubhouse door and said, “I’m here to straighten out my kid. He has a lot on his head.”

Indeed he does. There is the death of his best friend, Frank King, dead from cancer at 38. There is the constant talk of a possible trade to Seattle. And there was the dropped fly ball Monday that let in two runs — and a nearly dropped deep drive on the next play that popped out of his glove. Griffey stabbed that one barehanded and said, “That catch was from my days as a Moeller High School wide receiver.

“If I had dropped that one I would have thrown my glove into the stands and played barehanded,” he added. “On the one I dropped, I was just trying to protect myself. I saw (second baseman) Brandon Phillips go down to the ground to get out of my way and I flinched. I thought I was going to have to jump over him.”

Griffey was not in Tuesday’s lineup, but manager Dusty Baker said it had nothing to do with the fly-ball difficulties. It was planned.

“He’s played almost every game,” said Baker. “He played the doubleheader Saturday in New York, then played the day game afterward on Sunday and played Monday night.”

Said Griffey, “I was supposed to have one of the doubleheader games off, but when we lost the first one I stayed in. Dusty told me I’d get tonight off.”

Of the drop and near-drop, Baker said, “He’s human. Plus he took his eye off it when he saw Phillips coming at him. That only happened because of Brandon’s range. Most second basemen wouldn’t ever have been out there. I’d rather have too many in the area than too few.”

Speaking of Phillips, he is completely bald. No hair. The Mohawk he sported in spring training and the first month-and-a-half of the season is gone.

“Got tired of getting haircuts,” he said. “Not used to that.”

And there was a cool reunion during batting practice between former Reds pitchers who pitched together on the 1994 team and hadn’t seen each other since.

Steve Foster is now bullpen coach for the Florida Marlins and he was walking on the field when a voice yelled, “Hey, Steve. It’s me. Kevin Jarvis.”

Jarvis, after 12 years in the majors with 10 different teams, is now a scout with the Diamondbacks.

“Steve got hurt in 1994, but I’ll never forget how he helped me by talking to me, and after he left the Reds he sent me e-mails and letters of encouragement telling me how proud he was of me.”

Of his career, Jarvis said, “Somebody told me only 10 players pitched for 10 or more different teams and I was one of them. That’s pretty neat. And I pitched a year in Japan. My last game was for the Red Sox against the Yankees in Yankee Stadium and it doesn’t get much better than that.”

Foster has a book out entitled “Lesson from Little League and Life” and he proudly presented me with a signed copy.

Foster was an up-and-coming pitcher until — true story — he hurt his arm throwing at milk bottles on the Johnny Carson TV show.

And Foster was involved in one of my all-time favorite baseball stories. He had never been out of the country when he went to Montreal with the Reds. At Canadian customs he was asked, “Do you have anything to declare?” Flustered with the question, Foster said with conviction, “Yes sire, I’m proud to be an American.” The agent was not pleased with that answer.

Foster’s father, who helped with the book, is a former newspaper editor and Foster himself lives by the principles of the word of God.

Good people.

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