FanHouse CalRipken

Here is a quick list of excuses to explain where The Dugout has been: our website is producing a code that angers Google and now nobody can look at or operate it properly, we got "busy with life stuff," popular video game or television show is addictive, we had softball practice, we realized baseball was boring and decided to change The Dugout into an endless blog about mixed martial arts, our favorite teams were all eliminated (in my case, "eliminated in April") and therefore we lost interest, our wives had babies, our grandmothers died, our pets reproduced via binary fission, and the most believable one, "we got distracted watching baseball."

Regardless of the excuse you believe, we're back, and tonight we play catchup by over-analyzing everything that has or could happen between now and the end of the season. Who's bullpen will be stronger? Will Guerrero bust out his wonky danger slide again? How many singles will Thome get in the 8th inning? All this and more in our intense playoff blog... thing, after the jump.

Tuesday, FanHouse had the opportunity to discuss the MLB Playoffs with Baseball Hall of Famer Cal Ripken, who currently serves as a studio analyst for TBS. TBS will be broadcasting all four Division Series and also the NLCS again this season. Ernie Johnson is the studio host while Dennis Eckersley and David Wells join Ripken as studio analysts for these playoff games.

Of all the things Ripken discussed Tuesday, the most intriguing subject, not surprisingly, was one Alex Rodriguez. A-Rod is an oft-maligned regular season superstar, in that he's put up extremely gaudy regular season numbers throughout his career, yet has never played in a World Series and has pretty sub-par numbers in the playoffs overall -- especially of late.

Alex Rodriguez did steroids and now everybody has an opinion about it. I'm just a lowly blogger, and I have my opinion (it's sort of a big deal but probably not as big a deal as everyone is saying), so of course professional baseball players and analysts -- people renowned for their playing ability and/or analytical insights -- are going to want to share their views, too, even if at this point it's utterly impossible to say anything interesting about the topic.

Enter Cal Ripken. Ripken is a man that must be listened to. He's Cal freaking Ripken. But his viewpoint on the matter is about as well thought out as I was during my 10th Guinness last Friday:

I don't know if you know this or not, but since he's commissioner of Major League Baseball, Bud Selig seems to think this gives him special privileges that nobody else in America is entitled to. Why, as commissioner of baseball he's not bound by the ex post facto laws of our society, which means he's allowed to suspend Alex Rodriguez for breaking rules that weren't yet in place.

Okay, so I've spent a lot of time over the last two days watching playoff baseball on TBS, and while there are plenty of things I'm not too thrilled about with their coverage, for the most part it hasn't been half bad. The studio show with Ernie Johnson, Dennis Eckersley, and Cal Ripken is a bit unwatchable at times, but they're still getting the feel for each other, so there's a chance for it to get better.

A quick fix would be to replace Ripken with Charles Barkley, but I'm pretty sure that it would be impossible to get him away from whichever golf course/craps table he's frequenting at the moment. So I guess I'll just have to deal with Ripken and cross my fingers he gets better. The one thing I know I can't take much more of, though, is Mr. Dick Stockton.

How does this man continue to get work with networks? The man butchers names on a regular basis, and half the time I'm not even sure he knows where he is. Dick was working the Cubs and Dodgers game on Wednesday, and before the first pitch was even thrown he'd already made two mistakes.

When describing how historic a matchup it was to have the Dodgers and Cubs playing a postseason series, he said "to say this is a big series would be an understudy." I think he meant to say understatement, but with Dick Stockton, who knows for sure? Maybe he really meant that it would be a great series that TBS can move to the primetime slot when they don't have a Red Sox/Angels game to show.

A minute later he referred to Cubs starting pitcher Ryan Dempster as Bryan Dempster. It's a tiny mistake, I know, but it's the kind of error Stockton makes on a regular basis. If TBS wants to make their baseball coverage better, the first move they should make is finding a replacment for Stockton.

Our MLB editor provides weekly dispatches from major league games in Notes From the Clubhouse.

Last week, the Orioles celebrated the 25th anniversary of their 1983 World Series title. That was the last time the once-proud franchise won a championship, in case you were wondering, and it's been a decade since they were relevant.

Eight days later GM Andy MacPhail did nothing at the trade deadline despite his club's grim chances in 2008. Closer George Sherrill is still an Oriole. So is second baseman Brian Roberts, first baseman Aubrey Huff, outfielder Jay Payton and starting pitcher Daniel Cabrera.

To an outsider it might look like the latest gaffe from a front office that has been as hapless as they come since the days of the Clinton administration. But spend a few days with the team at Camden Yards and you get an entirely different vibe.

MacPhail has overhauled the organization in such a way that there's very real hope for the very near future. In perfect concert, manager Dave Trembley has changed the clubhouse culture, stressing things like accountability, respect and appreciation. It's enough to make you see the light at the end of the tunnel, if nothing else.

Slowly, but surely, what started as slight concern about maple bats has grown into a full-grown issue. The furor is thus: maple bats splinter and spray far more than their ash counterparts, while the performance advantages that many players believe maple afford them are largely imaginary. (Baseball players are kooks like that.) Still, good luck convincing them.

Consider Cal Ripken and Harold Reynolds -- not players, per se, but former ones -- as among the "no-big-deal" chorus:

"I think they might be making a little bit too much out of it," Ripken said Tuesday.

"They don't use as thick a handle anymore and the bats are a lot lighter. ... The head of the bat is a lot bigger, and it's going to break," Reynolds said. "I don't think it's maple or whatever substance they might be using to make the bat. I think it's more in the design that the players are using now."

That would be all well and good, lads, except the science -- explained pretty clearly in this passionate Jeff Passan piece -- is straightforward. Ash bats crack. Maple bats break. And neither is better than the other at enhancing power. It's really not so hard, nor is it worth risking lives over.

Ah, retirement. Beaches, golf, reading books on the back porch with the old lady as you sip on some chilled Bourbon. Sounds like a charmed existence. Or you could also train for the Ironman. A race that after an ungodly amount of swimming and biking you run a freaking marathon. That's what recently retired Jeff Conine is up to these days.

From the New York Times:

Conine, a 17-year veteran of six big-league teams, has spent long hours swimming, cycling and running in preparation for an ambitious triathlon schedule that will culminate in the Ironman world championship in Kona, Hawaii, in October. Several former teammates, accustomed to the less rigorous conditioning of baseball, have questioned his sanity.

"Guys in my position are supposed to sit back and relax, not do something ridiculous like this," said Conine, who lives in South Florida and will make his triathlon debut here Sunday at the St. Anthony's Triathlon.

This is pretty wild. I salute Conine for his post-baseball pursuits. At 41 and being a former professional baseball player, he certainly still has some spring left to him. I just hope he realizes the race doesn't culminate with him taking over for Cal Ripken, Jr. in baseball's Hall of Fame.

Different Ironman, Jeff.

And if he had a Hall of Fame vote, by george -- and thank God he doesn't -- he'd be voting Brady Anderson straight in:

"It happens to everybody. You age and you stop playing -- although he seems to have the fountain of youth, somehow," Ripken said recently of Anderson. "He came over in the Mike Boddicker trade and Boddicker's locker was next to mine, so he ended up coming into that locker. We struck up a friendship from that point.

"I don't know how many votes he's going to get, [but] I'll vote for him."

"Brady was pretty much my best friend in baseball, and I enjoyed spending time with him," Ripken said. "It's really weird now, because I don't get a chance to see him as much. We get busy doing other things. As he refers to it, it's the offseason all the time now. Brady's in fantastic shape and it looks like he can still play. I guess he's on the ballot because he's been out five years now. I didn't know he was out that long. It seemed like he was still playing long after I retired."

Unfortunately for Anderson, he is not a Hall of Famer by any standards, even if you throw out the pretty persuasive steroid suspicions surrounding his career. A cursory glance at Anderson's statistics doesn't reveal a Hall of Fame player; it reveals an above-league average player with a short shelf life and one unbelievable season. Fortunately, despite what Woody Paige might tell you, "friendship" isn't grounds for Hall of Fame induction. If only.

After Day 1 of the MLB playoffs, the reviews of are in, and they're not particularly kind to Frank Thomas. From the LA Times:

Given that TBS is spending a reported $45 million a year to televise Major League Baseball's first-round playoff package through 2013, you would have thought the network would have invested more thought and research before handing a prized big-stage studio analyst's seat to Frank Thomas, a.k.a. the Big Uneasy.

Before, during and after the Angels 4-0 loss to the Red Sox, Thomas looked and sounded more nervous than Reggie Willits, the Angels rookie thrust into the lineup to replace Matthews in center field. Thomas either had nothing to say or was unwilling to say anything meaningful for fear of offending someone he'll be playing against next season.

What about Cal Ripken? As the Baltimore Sun's Ray Frager wrote, " ... at least he wasn't Frank Thomas." I hate to pile onto the guy, but television analysts are only useful when they actually express an opinion, when they actually offer insight as opposed to simply trying to stay polite.

Of course, that's not to say that playoff baseball on TBS is a complete disaster. No, I think I'd watch any sports studio show anchored by Ernie Johnson, the underrated glue that keeps TNT's NBA broadcasts in a league of their own. Even with Thomas flopping and Ripken barely impressing, Johnson kept the show interesting and light. With him on board, I'm giving the show an awkward thumbs up. Without him, though, the whole endeavor would probably be an unmitigated disaster.

(via Sports Business Daily)