Tagged: Jeff Francoeur

September 21, 2012

9/13/12 Royals at Twins: Target Field

It was back to Target Field again. Once again, I had a guest to accompany me to this game:

This time, it was my friend who lives two doors down from me, Jonathan Mueller. If you’re wondering, (probably not) I had my “professional camera”, so I gave it to a lady waiting outside the gates to take a picture of the two of us. If you’re new to the blog, I’m on the left and Jonathan is on the right.

Pretty much as we got in, I semi-rushed to the right field seats (I say “semi” because in New York, it’s a straight-up race to the seats. Here in Minnesota, people take their time, so the only reason to run is if you’re going from the left field gate to right field or vice-versa.), and I quickly got Jeff Francoeur(That’s right, right?) to toss me a ball:

I can tell he’s a cool guy, I would have liked to have met him better when he was on the Mets, but his departure coincided with my introduction to ballhawking.

Anyway, I then headed over to left field to try to get a ball over there. First, I asked Jeremy Guthrie for a ball, but he saw my make-shift Royals t-shirt, and just laughed and threw the ball back. It looked a lot like this shirt but with a bigger logo. If you’re wondering why I had to tape a logo to a blue shirt, it was because my actual Royals shirt was still en route. It wasn’t until two days later that I actually got the shirt in the mail. Suffice to say, it wasn’t an impressive job on the part of USPS considering I had ordered it a week prior to these two games:

Sorry for the repeat graphic for those of you who follow me on twitter. (If not, you can over there in the sidebar —->;)

It was at that point that I put my MLB Fan Cave t-shirt back on. Also, in left field, I saw these guys:

I just took the picture because Kelvin Herrera is the guy who tossed me a ball the day prior and Alcides Escobar was the guy who prevented me all day from tying a no-BP record of six balls in a game the previous game. After I figured I wasn’t going to snag any more baseballs from the Royals via toss-up, I headed back two right field. This was disappointing, because given the fact it was the Royals, I was eyeing big numbers when I first got to the left field seats.

There I snagged two balls from the bat of unidentified Royals within a span of a few seconds. The second of which I immediately gave away to a kid. That might sound good, but there were about four hit in a row–all of which I lost in the sun and allowed to hit the seats. These two were just the ones I managed to pick up. It was an interesting situation 1. I didn’t have time to put on sunglasses since they were all consecutive. 2. It wasn’t the sun itself, I guess it was just the brightness of the sky. I saw the baseballs traveling through the air perfectly one second, and poof, it disappeared from my sight. Like I said: weird. 3. On the first, I was running to my left, and I was going to jump up and stop once I caught the ball. However, once I lost the ball mid-jump, my concern wasn’t stopping; it was just not getting my skull hit by a ball. Anyway, because of this, I kind of bumped into a guy. Right after which, I made sure to apologize for bumping into him. Just for that, he gave me a dirty look and told me, “You gotta be more careful.” Sorry, sir, for caring about my mental health.

These two baseballs would be it for batting practice, but I headed back to left field later in batting practice where I managed to do this to my leg on the edge of a bleacher:

Anyway, given all of the circumstances, this was my (blurred) reaction to “only” snagging three balls during batting practice:

I did score a few other items, though:

The shoelaces were to promote cancer awareness and the other scrubby thing was a company’s promotion within the ballpark itself.

During the game itself, I had two main views. This one:

And when a string of lefties came up, this:

Over here, I got stopped by a woman who asked me where I got my MLB Fan Cave shirt. I learned from talking to her that it was because *she* had been one of the nine cave dwellers at the beginning before getting eliminated- as six of the nine have been- since then. Her name would be Lindsay Guentzel, and she gave both myself and Jonathan one of the bajillion baseball cards the Fan Cave had given her upon her departure:

So that was a fun thing. I believe that was around the seventh inning. At that point, the Twins were losing 3-1. In the bottom of the eighth, the Twins managed to score a run off a bases-loaded walk. After which, Justin Morneau struck-out with the bases loaded to end the inning.

The bottom of the ninth rolled around and the Twins were down by a run, so I changed my get-up to fit the situation and took my glove off to take this picture:

Right as I lowered my phone, I saw this happen:

Let’s just say I had a pretty good view of the home run. Here’s the picture of the stands when the cameras first turned to the crowd. I’m in the green circle just having lowered my phone to see a ball flying through the air:

Here I am getting out of my seat, and going down a row, with the arrow pointing to where I was going. I was doing this all while simultaneously making an attempt to put my glove on my left hand:

I judged the ball as perfectly as I have ever judged a ball. Here I am with the ball entering my glove:

Unfortunately, I only had the glove half on, so I couldn’t squeeze it at all and the best I could do was pull the ball towards me as to not have it skip away from me before I could grab it on the ground. Meanwhile, Jonathan was raising his arms in celebration in the green rectangle:

And you just read the account of my first ever home run. Better yet, it tied the home run. As a Twins fan, there was nothing better short of catching a walk-off Joe Mauer home run. Wow. I still can’t believe it.

Here I am right after I snagged it:

I was so excited about it I even took a second while I was chasing a second home run of the game in the standing room:

Yep, a home run snag…….Minnesota Style:

Well, I didn’t get a second home run, but what I saw from the standing room was good enough for me:

That would be the Twins team celebrating around Denard Span after he had the walk-off hit to win the game in the bottom of the 10th:

He was especially celebrated because it was his first game back from a DL stint.

I then stuck around after the game by Anthony Lapanta and Tom Kelly:

While I was out there, a lot of people passed me since I was right by gate 34, the main gate into and out of Target Field. One of those people was the woman who took the opening picture that you saw. She came up to me while I had my camera pressed to my eye and said: “Did you catch the Plouffe home run?”

“Yeah, you saw that?” I said

“I was saying to my husband: ‘ I took a picture of those guys before the game.’ Congratulations!”

But why was I out there? I wanted to get a better look at my home run snag when they showed it on the Jumbotron. (Is that one of those things where the brand has become synonymous with the individual product? You know, like Kleenex.)

Actually, I got a better look at it than when I went home to see the replay:

That would be me in the process of dropping the ball with Jonathan about to celebrate. If you enlarge the picture, you can see my phone in my right hand. And the second picture:

That would be me going down for the baseball and seeing it behind me through my legs before I turned around and grabbed it with my glove since my open hand was occupied with my phone. What made the home run *even* better was it was the first game home run ball snagged in the outfield at Target Field on mygameballs.com. It was just recently that I started calling Target Field because of the University of Minnesota, so it’s nice to be the first one on mygameballs to record a hit game home run snag, and do something I could never in any of my other stadiums.

STATS:

4 Balls at this game (3 pictured because I gave one away)

Numbers 417-420 for my career:

198 Balls in 47 Games= 4.21 Balls Per Game
4 Balls x 28,669 Fans= 114, 676 Competition Factor
56 straight Games with at least 1 Ball
6 straight Games with at least 2-3 Balls
5 straight Games with at least 4 Balls
30 Balls in 8 Games at Target Field= 3.75 Balls Per Game
7 straight Games with at least 1-2 Balls at Target Field
6 straight Games with at least 3 Balls at Target Field
5 straight Games with at least 4 Balls at Target Field
Time Spent On Game 3:31- 11:36= 8 Hours 5 Minutes

March 27, 2011

Survey of Adults’ Perception of Baseball

I may have mentioned this is some other entry but here’s the actual layout of the survey:

I wanted to see how the average adult viewed baseball. So, instead of running up and down Fordham Road trying to get the ideas of random adults, I asked my 19 former and current high school teachers (20 if you count the baseball team’s pitching coach). The process went like this:

1. Ask teacher who their favorite baseball player was.

1a. If yes, why this was their favorite player

2. If no, what they would like to see in athletes as role models.

3. Wait a few weeks and then follow up with them if they gave me a name for the first question.

4. Asking who their favorite player was outside of New York.

5. Again, asking why.

The purpose of asking them their favorite player instead of outright asking what they think of the game is to see how well their ideals (or lack there of due to them compartmentalizing) matched up with what they think of the game. This is most evident in why they picked a certain player over another. Oh, and keep in mind that I am doing this in a private school in the Bronx so the results will be how adults view baseball in New York.

The Results:

5 Do not follow baseball

93% of favorite players were of New York teams (shocker) leading me to make step 4 (the one teacher that mentioned a non-New York player was a coin flip away from picking David Wright)

10 of those had a favorite player on the Yankees

5 of those had a favorite player on the Mets

The Players chosen for question 1:

Derek Jeter 6

David Wright 2

Jose Reyes 2

Pittsburgh+Pirates+v+New+York+Mets+sBhfaN_0XwOl.jpg

Mariano Rivera 2

Jorge Posada 2

Andy Pettitte 2

Robinson Cano 1

R.A. Dickey 1

Tim Lincecum 1

But like I said above, this study isn’t about the players themselves but how the teachers view the game. Let’s start with the teachers who don’t follow baseball:

This was by far the most varied bunch that I can categorized. With five different people there were five different answers, connecting occasionally but still, varied.

3 were about attitude

2 were about integrity

Because they were all different I will sum them all up (this is again, what they would like to see in athletes).

This teacher actually watched as a kid but stopped in the 90’s because of the McGwire and Sosa steroids issue. His answer was: he would like to see more integrity in the game, less money, and more teams made up of non-superstars.
I actually never asked him question 1 because he mentioned in a class that he didn’t watch sports. His answer was: An athlete should be gracious in both defeat and success. He repeated the same concept in different forms trying to get it just right. I have a feeling about what he meant. He was trying to get at that an athlete should not cry in defeat nor should he dance in victory. He should have grace no matter what the outcome. For example, if he loses, he should just walk off the field, comfort other teammates, and start preparing for the next game (professionally).
He just thinks that professional athletes are a spoiled bunch. (Can anyone argue that this isn’t true in New York?) His answer was: he wanted to see less athletes living the fast life (he gave the example of Derek Jeter but I hope he meant it in terms of attitude because has anyone seen his mansion:

Over 5,000 square feet). He wanted athletes to be down to earth and to play hard and work hard.

4. He simply doesn’t follow baseball, no special story. He wanted to see more well behaved and humble baseball players.

5. The last again did not have any special story and simply did not want to see PEDs in baseball.

I think that there is a relationship between the fact that these people don’t watch baseball and their opinions are so varied. I think that it is because baseball is so big in the country that morals are shaped by it.

The people who gave me a name were far more uniform. Probably because most of these centered primarily on one player and one team.

The top five characteristics listed are:

The player tries his best 7
The player is a good teammate 6
The player is a good role model 5
The player is a leader 5
The player is a hard worker 4

Remind you of anyone? This is mostly why I think that for those who watch it, baseball shapes the person more than the other way around.

Because I was getting so many Jeter and Yankee responses, I thought I should add another question to get a truer response. I wanted to see if their beliefs for why they picked the first player held up for the second one or if they had picked the first one by his play and created a list of his positive attributes to justify it to themselves (sorry to the teachers but a lot of people do this).

Obviously I did not follow up with those who don’t watch baseball but the results were:

43% were players who played in this past World Series (counting the Lincecum fan from question 1)

36% were players from the rival of their favorite team because they had respect for what that player can do.

29% of teachers were completely stumped. Taking over 3 minutes to answer the question because they had never thought about it before.

There were three teachers that picked Albert Pujols. I think it might have been that he is the best player in baseball.

The remaining teacher picked Jeff Francouer because he used to be on the teacher’s favorite team, the Mets, and threw him a ball during bp (I have much to teach that one).

The players for step 4:

Tim Lincecum 3

Albert Pujols 3

Cliff Lee 1

Buster Posey 1

Jeff Francoeur 1

Ryan Howard 1

Ryan+Howard+San+Francisco+Giants+v+Philadelphia+g2hCHZW4AYAl.jpg

David Ortiz 1

Josh Hamilton 1

Carl Crawford 1

Roy Halladay 1

Dustin Pedroia 1

Chase Utley 1

and if you can’t believe that no one picked a certain bearded World Series hero. Well, neither can he:

The top five characteristics for this group were:

1. The player is very talented ( it could have been worded differently like: “He is a five tool player” but the gist of the teacher’s reasoning was talent) 7

2. The player is a professional 3

3. The player is a teammate 3

4. The player is determined/persistent 3

5. The player is a family man 3

Now, there are two similarities between the two lists but the major difference shows in that the #1 attribute by far for the non-New York players was the player’s talent. This is because when a player is from your favorite/local team you are more apt to chose him as a favorite player. When the player is not on your local team, you differentiate based on the actual attributes you value in a player. The reason for the overlap of the two categories is because when amongst your local team, you find a player who fits your attributes you are more likely to see him as your favorite.

Of course, this is just my opinion of the numbers. The beauty in statistics is that as empirical and objective as the numbers themselves may be. The interpretation of those numbers is entirely subjective.

*No teacher’s names were mentioned in the process of making this blog. Any physical or emotional damage is done at the risk of the teacher for reading this entry and Observing Baseball and all of its employees cannot be held accountable for any lowering of self-esteem that occurred from this entry. However, any praise for his entry is freely accepted at fischerm@fordhamprep.org

March 22, 2011

Kansas City Royals Offseason Recap and Preview

Well they didn’t do that well in 2010:

… again but the Royals have never been about winning today (seriously, have they won since George Brett was there?). They are building for tomorrow. Take that into this preview with you.

Grade: B

Notable Additions:

Vin Mazzaro, Joaquin Arias, Jeff Francoeur, Melky Cabrera, Alcides Escobar, Jeremy Jeffress, Lorenzo Cain, Zack Miner, Jeff Francis, and Pedro Feliz.

Notable Subtractions:

large_Zack%20Greinke.jpg

Zack Greinke, David DeJesus, Gil Meche, Yuniesky Betancourt, and Brandon Duckworth.

Why?: I know that they lost Zack Greinke this off-season. However, even though the grade is for how well the team set up for their immediate future, I lessen the penalty of losing a star player if the team got something good in return. The Royals definite deserved this slight bump for what they got back for Greinke. Also, they added some crazy depth everywhere. Although, am I the only one to notice that Robinson Cano’s best year came after Melky left? We’ll see what impact he has on players like Alcides Escobar.

I would like to point out that KC’s rotation overall did improve because of names like Vin Mazzaro amongst others. Although they did come in last in their division last year and lost their ace in the offseason, I see a solid transistion year. Let me make an argument for a better rotation in 2011. They traded for Vin Mazzaro and must have seen something in him to give up a piece like David DeJesus. Zack Miner is a solid back of the rotation starter that constantly hovers around 4.00 ERA.

Now… the Jeff Francis case. Does anyone remember that he was the ace of the Rockies’ World Series run in 2007? Anyone? Well, he was. He had 17 wins and had an ERA of 2.21 until the World Series (where the whole Rockie team shut down). He did horribly in 2008 but it was later revealed that he had an injury in his shoulder. He didn’t pitch in 2009 because of arthtoscopic surgery. Pitched badly again in 2010 with an ERA of 5.00 on the dot. I think that this may have been because of the recovery from the surgery. For most shoulder surgeries, it is usually takes a few years to fully recover. If he can get anywhere close to where he was before, the Royals have a much better staff than last year.

Predicted Record Range: 68-73 wins Like I said, this depends on the pitching staff because their young defense will be unpredictable and can fluctuate ( so their wins will fluctuate). We have yet to see how the offense will come together but with solid pitching they can improve a bit on their win total last year.

For those of you who did a little link clicking and wonder why I am so behind on game recaps, I have a lot of homework which is also why this entry took so much time. I have yet to see how baseball will affect my blogging but I can’t post the game recaps of games last weekend until next Monday because my pictures for those games are in a computer that I do not have access to.