Cal.e.'s Korner

C.: Well, d.c. is off work for the weekend, but he said he needed to  study and catch up on his “domestic chores,” whatever those are.

All I know is that it involves Eudora,

some dirty, things. I suppose he meant clothes and dishes. She's probably upset that there are so many of them and needs some help washing them.

Since d.c.’s not available and there are no calls on our 119 line form people who want to brag about how well their lives are going, I might as well listen to his favorite radio talk show host… here it is, it’s coming on now.

Live, from Cut-N-Shoot Texas, it’s the Joe Groan Show, with your host, the world’s 131,000l leading authority on sports, JOE GROAN!

JG.: Thank you, thank you, thank you very much KEEP/KEEN Cut-N’-Shoot/ Conroe for carrying my podcast live! We have some pressing issues to discuss in

the world of sports today, so I’ll start right in.

Okay, the big news in Houston is that (surprise!) Yankee skipper Arron Boone has accused an Astros’ player of cheating. It seems that sub two hundred hitter Taylor Trammel used an illegal bat to get his one hit against his former organization, a double. This game was won by the Yankees 8-4, so Trammel’s hit (and the bat he got it with) were irrelevant, according to the higher ups at MLB. It sems that MLB has a rule against bats being painted different colors too close to each other, or something like that. The bat wasn’t corked, shaven down to be lighter, or anything like that. The bat was merely used too much. I’ll bet if it had been a Yankees’ player, the bat would have been returned to him, but Trammel’s bat was confiscated by the league. No further action was deemed necessary.

As a player, I liked Arron Boone ( and Darth Vader, according to the later Star Wars movies, was once an idealistic kid bent on using The Force for good, not evil). As a manager for the Evil Empire, I don’t care for him, but I will say this: if anyone knows if someone is cheating, it would be Boonie. The Yankees were caught twice using cell phones to relay catcher’s signals to batters and were find and astounding ten thousand dollars! That must have hurt their billionaire owner’s cash reserve…in his couch cushions.

Anyway, this year, the Yankees, Cubs, and about one-half of the teams in MLB were using “Torpedo Bats” that were eventually deemed to be illegal after a study by MLB. Really? An MLB player can used a bat that has its weight distributed differently, but players are forbidden from shaving a few ounces off their bats? It seems that there is some hypocrisy in that thinking, and I’m (not) shocked!

One team that didn’t use the Torpedo bats was the Astros, and, when they had all their regular players healthy, they were leading the league in batting average. Now, their starting centerfield is having a hard time breaking the so-called “Mendoza Line,” and they’re still in first place in the pathetic AL West.

Yes, the Astros had eighteen players on the injured list at one time, and four of them were supposed to be starting pitchers in their rotation…and water is wet. You play the cards you’re dealt. The last time the Astros won the World Series, they had the least injuries in all of MLB, so that counts for something, I suppose.

Back to the torpedo bats, the list of teams that used them was as extensive as the list of teams that (allegedly) used electronics to steal catchers’ signs. Let me list the teams who will never be punished significantly by  baseball commissioner Rob (he is NOT a) Man,Fred: the Yankees, the Red Sox, the Cubs, the Giants, and the Dodgers. All these teams play in major television markets. The pathetic Mets, White Sox, Athletics and Angels are too bad to worry about.

Since the players who used the (now-illegal) Torpedo bats was in alphabetical order, so the fist name on the list was Cody “Crybaby” Bellinger. Bellinger is a five-tool player…when he plays at his home park. In recent years, he’s batted eighty to one-hundred points lower on the road than at home. Can you say, “smoking gun”?

One player I noticed not being on this list is Aaron Judge, who still hits a ton of home runs…and keeps his mouth shut, for the most part. That’s a winning combination in my book.

Now that I’ve ranted about two of my least favorite people, I will quote one of my favorites, Jim Rome: “It’s baseball, if you ain’t cheatin’ you ain’t tryin.’

This has been Joe Groan, with one man’s(correct) opinion.