Author Archives: Jeff Kallman

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About Jeff Kallman

Member, Internet Baseball Writers Association of America and the Society for American Baseball Research.

Dave Parker, RIP: Presence

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Dave Parker

The Cobra had a blast playing baseball–and he leveled a few blasts, too . . .

Dave Parker almost lived long enough to take the Cooperstown podium for his Hall of Fame induction. A long-enough battler with Parkinson’s disease, there had been a time when Parker wondered whether it was his own fault he hadn’t or wouldn’t be elected to the Hall.

The Classic Baseball Era Committee elected him last December. The Cobra died at 74 Saturday, 29 days before he’d have been up on that stage. Not fair.

Even before his notoriety during the 1985 Pittsburgh drug trials, Parker could have caused a lot of people to wonder the same thing. Power hitter though he might be, he also played with the attitude of scrappy little middle infielders.

On the bases he thought infielders plus catchers were nothing more than papier mache walls through which to run. not living breathing humans liable to stand just as strong against him as the linebackers against whom he played as a high school running back. Describing him as a Sherman tank running on high test would not have been inaccurate.

Those caused him injuries that got in the way of his performance more often than not as time went on. His admitted cocaine use at the drug trials surely did, too. He might apologise for having been a fool, but Parker never once shied away from taking responsibility for his own self.

That classic prankish-looking face and that classic wisenheimer smile—invariably, Parker resembled a man unable to mask that he’d just detonated a ferocious prank somewhere within the vicinity—married his jaw-dropping power at the plate to make the Cobra look as though he couldn’t wait to carve his autograph into a hapless pitcher’s cranium and make the poor sap laugh his fool head off over it.

His self-worth was bottomless and unapologetic. He wasn’t even close to kidding when he told a fan trying to get the best possible angle for a cell phone camera shot, “It wouldn’t take much to make me look good.” But what made him look better was his reputation for team leadership wherever he played.

In Pittsburgh and in Oakland he was part and parcel of World Series winners. In between, he had a memorable stop in Cincinnati, where his manager was Pete Rose and he sat on deck one fine day in Wrigley Field, about to close a road trip out, awaiting manager Rose’s decision on what player Rose would do at the plate—and whether player Rose would take a final shot at passing Ty Cobb on the all-time hit list in the bargain.

Parker’s presence helped Rose make his decision. Manager Rose knew his Reds had only the slimmest shot at staying in the 1985 pennant race and that nobody batting behind Parker was liable to deliver the clutch hit. A sacrifice bunt would have left first base open and the Cubs liable for malpractise if they pitched to Parker rather than put him on to go for the weaker pickings behind him.

Never mind every Red fan on the planet plus their (shall we say) mercurial owner Marge Schott demanding Rose bunt and save the big hit for the home folks. Manager Rose ordered Player Rose to swing away knowing that would give his team just enough more chance to win—but he struck out. It was the most honourable strikeout of Rose’s life. Maybe the most honourable play of it, too. Imagine if Parker wasn’t on deck.

Once he cleaned up from his cocaine issue, Parker’s clubhouse leadership came back to the fore. Making him the kind of guy who had big value to his team even when he slumped. Your clubhouse might be a lot more fun but it would also become a lot more baloney-proof.

As a matter of fact, that clubhouse value shone brightest when the Cobra left Oakland after their 1989 Series triumph, but the Athletics got swept out of the 1990 Series—by a Reds team picking itself up and dusting itself off after Rose’s violations of Rule 21(d) cost him his professional baseball career.

Stop snarling and let Thomas Boswell (who will be in Cooperstown that July weekend accepting his Career Excellence Award induction) explain, as he did in a sharp post mortem analysing just how those mighty A’s could have been humbled by those underdog but hardly modest Reds:

Where is Dave Parker when you need a clubhouse enforcer? The A’s always knew, sooner or later, they’d need Big Dave to quell a cell-block riot, just as the ’77 Reds desperately missed Tony Perez after they traded him. In ’88 [Jose] Canseco popped off about beating the Dodgers in five games. The Dodgers won in five. In ’89 Parker promised to clean, stuff, and mount Jose if he spoke above a whisper. The A’s swept. Now Dave’s gone, Jose predicted a sweep. General manager Sandy Alderson makes a lot of good moves, but saving money on Parker may have cost him a world title.

Dave Parker

“Where is Dave Parker when you need a clubhouse enforcer?” The A’s missed Parker more than they thought when they let him escape after 1989.

“He’s one of the greatest teammates I’ve ever had,” said Parker’s Oakland teammate, pitcher Dave Stewart, a man who looked like six parts commando and half a dozen parts assassin on the mound. “He had such a presence when he walked into the room.”

“He used to say, ‘When the leaves turn brown, I will be wearing the crown’,” said Keith Hernandez, who played against Parker as a Cardinal and a Met and saw Parker win the National League batting title back to back. “Until I usurped his crown in ’79. He was a better player than me. RIP.”

Until his illness made it difficult if not near impossible, Parker’s post-playing days included working as a special batting instructor for the Pirates. Longtime Pirates star Andrew McCutchen was one of those who learned a few things from the Cobra.

“It was rough to see him go through that,” said McCutchen in a formal statement. “I just hope now he’s in a better place and not having to worry about that stuff anymore . . . He was probably Superman to a lot of people when he played.”

Parker’s kryptonite turned out to be Parkinson’s. “I’m having good days, bad days, just like everybody else,” he told a Pennsylvania radio station four years ago. “My bad days, you just got to play the hand that’s dealt. And I know that it’s something that I got to deal with for the rest of my life.”

One of his ways of dealing with it was setting up the Dave Parker 39 Foundation (39 was his uniform number), raising money to continue research into finding a cure for the disease whose other famed victims have included actor Michael J. Fox, boxing legend Muhammad Ali, singer Linda Ronstadt, and Pope John Paul II.

Pirates middle infielder Nick Gonzales wears Parker’s old number 39. He said Saturday, learning Parker had just passed, “It just meant a little more playing today with that number. Personally, I think it should be retired. I think I should get a new number, honestly.”

That kind of tribute would be one of two Parker might appreciate from his new eternal perch in the Elysian Fields. The other was the Pirates doing just what they did Saturday, thumping the higher-flying Mets 9-2 a day after they thumped them 9-1. And the Cobra didn’t have to promise to clean, stuff, and mount anyone to make it happen, either.

The Red Sox Devers-ify . . .

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Rafael Devers

Devers in the on-deck circle. He now joins the Giants in a deal that may not bear immediate fruit for the Red Sox but manna at the plate for the Giants.

Even leading the 21st Century in World Series titles (four), the Red Sox haven’t lost their capacity to stun. They can sweep their eternal rivals and neutralize those rivals’ number one hitting threat one moment (they held Aaron Judge to 1 bomb, while striking him out 9 times during the sweep) and trade a slugging three-time all-star the next.

Yes, that sounds too simple. So we’ll flesh it out a big more. A relationship fractured by foolishness on both sides ends with Rafael Devers going to the Giants and left-handed pitcher Kyle Harrison, right-handed pitcher Jordan Hicks, outfield prospect James Tibbs, and minor league right-hander Jose Bello going to the Red Sox.

Almost five years after the Red Sox traded Mookie Betts rather than think much about paying him his true value, they’ve unloaded a far more problematic player than Betts ever was. That won’t make the deal go down any more smooth for a Red Sox Nation too much flummoxed by the team’s front office follies in recent seasons, alas.

The deal also means the last of the Red Sox’s 2018 World Series winners are gone. The Mookie Monster has since been a critical element in two Dodgers world champions; Xander Bogaerts has become a mainstay in San Diego and a few National League pennant races.

Say what you will about Devers, the man can hit. His to-date .858 OPS, his average 33 home runs per 162 games lifetime, both prove it. His batting eye improves with age; he led the American League in walks at the time of the deal. And he took care of the second of two runs the Red Sox needed to finish sweeping the Yankees with a hefty 2-out home run in the bottom of the fifth. The Giants may have a home ballpark nowhere near as hitter-friendly as Fenway Park, but they’re getting a guy to whom the dimensions don’t matter so long as he can tee it up and swing big.

Part of the problem, and a critical reason why things came to Devers’s transcontinental change of baseball address, is that when you play him at third base “poisonous” doesn’t begin to describe it. He led the league in errors in six of his first seven seasons and the entire Show for the first four of those. He was 80 defensive runs below league average. (Fair disclosure: Bogaerts hasn’t exactly been toxin-free at shortstop, not being 27 defensive runs below league average for his career to date.)

That’s a compelling reason why the Red Sox thought signing free agent third baseman Alex Bregman was a smart idea. The problem was that the Red Sox took the clumsy way to handle both that and the little matter of convincing Devers that the longer he stayed at third base the more likely the Red Sox were to declare the area off limits pending a hazmat cleaning.

How would Devers have done at first base? We won’t know, at least regarding the Red Sox, because Devers didn’t exactly pounce on the opportunity when it was offered as Triston Casas hit the injured list. He won’t be taking a new shot on third in San Fran, either, since the Giants have a verified Gold Glover holding it down (Matt Chapman). He may not get a crack at first, either, with the Giants having a willing Wilmer Flores to move over in case former Met Dominic Smith needs a break or can’t hold it down longer-term.

But Devers will provide the Giants with something they haven’t had since their freshman top executive, Buster Posey, was last seen behind the plate for the Giants — a great hitter. Posey may also give Devers what the Red Sox couldn’t for whatever reason, a clear presentation of the “why” behind any move without insulting Devers’s considerable pride. Posey had bloody well better, too, considering the Giants have taken on the remainder of Devers’s contract — running through 2033 and paying him a nifty $250 million plus.

What do the Red Sox get other than out from under Devers’s remaining money and maybe a little more egg on their faces considering they didn’t exactly handle Devers with graceful hands and heads?

Harrison — Considered highly talented and still only 23, so he has time to put things together despite his 4.56 fielding-independent pitching rate to date. Depending on the Red Sox pitching injury picture, Harrison just might be seen in Red Sox silks before the stretch drive arrives. And that might occur next to any pitching the team ponders acquiring at or before the trade deadline now that they have about $250 million to play with.

Hicks — Serviceable relief pitcher whom the Giants tried out of the rotation last year, but when that experiment imploded Hicks went back to the bullpen, and the Red Sox are liable to keep him there.

Tibbs — A first-round pick last June, he’s been showing plenty of upside in the minors, but the Red Sox will likely wait for his AA-level results before thinking of him as Show bound.

Bello — Has bullpen upside to burn, from the look of his minor league life to date.

The rest of the Sox — With Devers gone, it looks as though there will be plate appearances to spare to spread around especially in dispersing an outfield crowd partially. But it’s an open question as to just whom would replace Devers’s plate production. For now. And maybe longer. Which means the Red Sox’s re-entry into the AL East race picture may be an arduous re-entry to sustain.

Published originally by Sports Central.

If they really must visit this White House . . .

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Jackie Robinson

The Dodgers should remind Trump and his minions—quietly, but profoundly—that they don’t hold with Hall of Famer Jackie Robinson’s dismissal as just another DEI hire.

The defending World Series champion Dodgers will go to the White House Monday at the invitation of President Donald Trump. Including Mookie Betts, who once declined the visit when his then-defending World Series champion Red Sox accepted the same invitation from the same president.

Three days before the Dodgers’ scheduled White House visit, Los Angeles Times columnist Gustavo Arellano urged the Dodgers to show up wearing jerseys with Jackie Robinson’s number 42. I hope the Dodgers read that column and heed the advice. Then, after the White House visit, I hope they perform a team march in those jerseys from the White House to the Pentagon, right up to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s office.

Of course I can dream, can’t I?

Hark back to March. When the Defense Department scrubbed from their Websites the stories of Robinson (an Army lieutenant in World War II, who beat a court martial for refusing to go to the back of a bus), the Navajo Code Talkers, the Tuskegee Airmen, and Ira Hayes, the Native American Marine who was one of the six raising the American flag at Iwo Jima.

When DoD press secretary John Ullyot cited Hegseth saying, “[Diversity, Equality, Inclusion] is dead at the Defense Department.” Until it wasn’t, within just days, following an uproar of the type that’s become second nature to Trump/Trump Administration doings, sayings, undoings, unsayings.

“It’s not a political stance that I’m taking,” the Mookie Monster told The Athletic‘s Fabian Ardaya last Friday. “I know no matter what I say, what I do, people are going to take it as political, but that’s definitely not what it is. This about an accomplishment that the Dodgers were able to accomplish last year.”

Was Betts unaware of Trump’s DoD’s bid to turn Robinson and other wartime African-Americans of the 1940s into non-persons? No one says he or his Dodger teammates should turn the visit into a giant, noisy raspberry. But just wearing the Robinson jerseys would be a more powerful rebuke to Trump than any verbal schpritz.

“Opponents of Trump can’t scream into the void, or among themselves, and think that’s resistance enough,” Arellano wrote.

They shouldn’t cede the traditions of this country, like the flag, the White House and democracy, to a tyrant like Trump just because he has wrapped himself in them.

Going to the White House does not normalize Trump—it’s a reminder that the place is ours, not his . . .

. . . Guys: Y’all pioneered the type of globalism and multiculturalism that Trump loathes, that L.A. now exemplifies and that continues to power the best franchise in baseball. It’s time to stand tall for the Dodger Way at the moment it matters the most.

“We have a lot of different people that are part of this organization,” said Dodger manager Dave Roberts.

Different backgrounds, different cultures, race, gender. So everyone had a different story. Economic situations. So we are all going as an organization. I do know that we’re all aligned, and everyone’s going to have their opinions.

This is not a political thing, and I’m not going to sit up here and make it political. I’m excited to, again, recognize the 2024 World Series champions, the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Roberts should be excited likewise to offer the president a reminder that the Dodgers stand for something above and beyond World Series rings. If they don’t want to wear number 42 Dodger jerseys to the White House, Roberts should think of handing Trump a number 42 Dodger jersey. Hand it to him, and say nothing.

Then—before they lend or spend any further credibility upon a man who rejects that for which the Dodgers have stood, since Jackie Robinson stepped onto a field to begin the Dodger career that launched a powerful rebuke to formal segregation and Robinson himself into Cooperstown and world immortality—Roberts and his players should get the hell out.

The new Yankee bats are barrels of fun

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Baseball Bugs

Contrary to social media bleating, this is NOT one of the new Yankee bats . . .

They resemble elongated bowling pins upon first glance, those new and legal Yankee bats, perhaps the kind that would be spotted on a bowling lane . . . built for Paul Bunyan. Don’t laugh. Wielding those curious new bats among their regular lumber on Saturday against the Brewers, the Yankees resembled a gaggle of Bunyans at the plate. It began (ahem) right off the bat against former Yankee Néstor Cortés.

Three pitches. Three long enough solo home runs.Two outs later, another solo smash. That was just in the bottom of the first, against the guy they traded to make a Yankee out of postseason Brewers victim Devin Williams.

OK, let’s get more detailed. After the Brewers did nothing with a one-out walk to Christian Yelich from newly-minted Yankee starter Max Fried in the top of the first, Paul Goldschmidt—erstwhile Diamondback and Cardinal, now manning first base for the Yankees and leading off, of all things—watched a first-pitch, four-seam fastball travel well enough into his wheelhouse to drive it to the rear end of the bullpen in left center field.

One pitch, one bomb, one run.

Newly-minted Yankee Cody Bellinger—erstwhile Dodger and Cub, who hasn’t really been the same since a shoulder injury during the Dodgers’ 2020 run to the World Series title—watched another first-pitch, four-seam fastball rising in the middle of the zone, but not high enough that he couldn’t yank it into the right center field seats about six rows past the bullpen wall.

Two pitches, two bombs, two runs.

Aaron Judge—the Yankees’ bona-fide Bunyan, all 6’7″ of him, beginning his tenth season in the sacred pinstripes—watched Cortés switch things up a little, having learned the hard way abour first-pitch fastballs not always obeying orders. The lefthander opened with a cutter. It got even more into Judge’s wheelhouse than that fastball got into Goldschmidt’s. And it disappeared into the left center field seats.

Three pitches. Three bombs. Three runs. Who knew the Yankees were just getting warmed up? (And, did Goldschmidt feel even a small kind of déjà vu all over again, since he’d once hit three out against the Brewers by himself, as a Cardinal?)

Cortés then showed the Brewers what they thought they’d traded for when he struck (All That) Jazz Chisholm, Jr. out looking and got Anthony Volpe to ground out right back to the mound. Up stepped Austin Wells, who’d opened the Yankee season with the first known leadoff bomb ever hit by any major league catcher last Thursday.

Wells was kind enough to wait until Cortés opened up with a pair of cutters off the inside part of the plate for a 2-0 count before Cortés threw him a fastball and he drove it over the left center field fence. It took back-to-back walks and a called punchout on Trent Grisham to stop the bleeding. The tourniquet proved unable to contain it for very long.

From there, after Fried almost handed the Brewers a quick enough tie on the house, what with a one-out hit batsman, an RBI single, a run scoring on an infield error, another base hit, and a run scoring when Fried threw Yelich’s grounder offline, the Yankees had more treats in store.

They began with Volpe, who turned out to have been the inspiration for the new elongated bowling-pin bat. Yankee fans watching the broadcast on television got the skinny from broadcast institution Michael Kay when Chisholm batted in the first:

The Yankee front office, the analytics department, did a study on Anthony Volpe, and every single ball it seemed like he hit on the label. He didn’t hit any on the barrel, so they had bats made up where they moved a lot of the wood into the label, so the harder part of the bat is going to actually strike the ball. It’ll allow you to wait a little bit longer.

Anthony Volpe

. . . but this is, in the hands of the man whose plate performances got the Yankee brain trusts—oh! the hor-ror!—thinking. (Volpe rewarded them by hitting one of the nine Yankee bombs against the Brewers Saturday.)

The woofing and warping began aboard social media (cheaters! cheaters!) until someone, who knows whom, slipped into the bellowing the fine and legitimate point that the rule book doesn’t quite outlaw such bats. I give you Rule 3.02: The bat shall be a smooth, round stick not more than 2.61 inches in diameter at the thickest part and not more than 42 inches in length. The bat shall be one piece of solid wood. You might note that it says nothing about just where the thickest allowance must be.

You might also note that there do remain baseball traditions immune to change. Suspecting the Yankees of crime is one of them. But you don’t have to be a Yankee cultist to wonder why it was (and is) that nobody else thought of creating such bats within the rules before the Yankees got the a-ha!

You might also note, further, that Cortés wasn’t exactly unfamiliar to the Yankees, since he’d been one of them fo five of the past six seasons. “Nestor (had) been here for years,” said Judge postgame. “He’s one of the best lefty pitchers in the game. He’s going to go out there and throw strikes and attack you. We just tried to go out there and be aggressive in our zone. Goldy and Belli, they were aggressive and got things going there. This place was rocking once I got up there.”

So. When Volpe batted the secone timd in the bottom of the second, he had Judge and Chisholm aboard and two out. This time, he waited until he had a full count before swinging and hammering a Cortés cutter over the left field fence. Now the game was 7-3, Yankees. And the party wasn’t even close to being over.

Fried survived a miniature jam in the top of the third, but Cortés didn’t survive walking Yankee designated hitter Jasson Domínguez to open the bottom. Connor Thomas came in to pitch. Grisham singled Domínguez to second, Thomas plunked Goldschmidt, Bellinger beat out an infield hit to send Domínguez home and load the pillows for Judge—who sliced salami on a 2-1 up-and-in cutter.

Then Chisholm wrung his way up from a few fouls to hit a 1-2 service into the right field seats. Making it 13-3, Yankees, which turned to 16-4 (erstwhile Phillie Rhys Hoskins poked an RBI single in the top of the fourth) in the bottom of the fourth, when Bellinger sent Grisham home on a sacrifice fly after Goldschmidt doubled him to third, but Judge followed with a two-run homer over the center field fence.

Judge’s third major league three-bomb day and his first since 2023. Eight home runs on the day for the Yankees so far, tying a franchise record they’d break when pinch-hitter Oswald Peraza hammered Brewers reliever Chad Patrick for a one-out, two-run homer in the bottom of the seventh. Making it 20-6 (the Brewers scored two in the sixth); the Brewers had at least an RBI double (Jake Bauers) and a two-run homer (Brice Turang) in them before the carnage finally ended.

“You think you’ve seen it all in baseball,” said Brewers manager Pat Murphy postgame, “and you haven’t because we saw it today—three pitches, three homers. Usually, you wake up from that. You go, ‘Wow. God. That can’t ever happen.’ It just did.”

The game was so disastrous for the Brewers that Murphy finally sent Bauers forth to pitch the bottom of the eighth, hoping to spare his pitching staff any further humiliation. The first baseman didn’t do any worse on the mound than the real pitchers, either. He shook off a two-out hit batsman and followup walk with a pop out for the side. He’d even gotten Judge to fly out in the eighth, an inning after Judge’s bid for a four-bomb day came up short enough in the sixth that he settled for a double.

He had to settle for becoming the fourth Yankee ever to have three three-bomb days, joining Hall of Famers Lou Gehrig (he had four of them) and Joe DiMaggio, plus third baseman Álex Rodríguez. “Anytime you get mentioned with those guys and what they’ve done in the game, and the careers they’ve had,” Judge said postgame, “it’s pretty special.”

Not that the Yankees were perfect on the day. Their five errors, which weren’t half as disastrous as their Game Five fifth inning in the World Series, hung Fried with four unearned runs among the six he did surrender on the day. Still.

“What a performance,” Yankee manager Aaron Boone summed up. “Kind of a weird, crazy game.” Kind of a crazy way to describe a massacre, too.

And the season begins in earnest . . .

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Rate Field

The grounds crew conditions Rate Field in Chicago for Opening Day. Little did they or those fans who did show up know the White Sox would open with—stop the presses! (as we’d have said in ancient times)—a win.

Opening Day is many things. Boring is never one of them. This year’s Opening Day certainly offered further evidence, including but not limited to . . .

Ice, Ice, Shohei Dept.—First, Ice Cube drove the World Series trophy onto the pre-game Dodger Stadium field. Then, 1988 World Series hero Kirk Gibson threw a ceremonial first pitch to 2024 World Series hero Freddie Freeman. Then, Shohei Ohtani finally ironed up in the seventh and hit one out for the badly-needed insurance, enabling the Dodgers to beat the Tigers, 5-4.

That left the Dodgers 3-0 after MLB’s full Opening Day, and one after they swept the Cubs in the Japan Series. I did hear more than a few “Break up the Dodgers” hollers, didn’t I?

This Time They Spelt It Right Dept.—“Traitor,” that is, when Bryce Harper and his Phillies opened against Harper’s former Nationals in Washington . . . and Harper said welcome to 2025 by stuffing the boo birds’ mouths shut with a blast over the right center field fence in the top of the seventh. That kicked the Phillies into overcoming a 1-0 deficit toward winning, 7-3.

That launch tied Harper for the most Opening Day home runs among active players, with six, but this was the first time he did it in Phillies fatigues.

“I love coming in here and playing in this stadium,” said Harper postgame. “I’ve got a lot of great memories in here, as well. Everywhere I go, it’s exactly like this. Some places are louder than others. It’s all the same.” Except that he left Washington a prodigious but lowballed boy to become man of the Phillies’ house since he signed with them for keeps in 2019.

I Can Get Started Dept.: Tyler O’Neill Display—One of the players Harper’s sixth Opening Day blast tied is Orioles outfielder Tyler O’Neill. That’s where the similarities end between them, for now—in the top of the third against the Jays, O’Neill hammered Jose Berrios’s sinker for a home run to make it six straight Opening Days he’s cleared the fences.

O’Neill hit 31 homers and produced an .847 OPS for last year’s Red Sox, before signing with the Orioles this winter as a free agent.

I Can Get Started Dept.: Paul Skenes Display—The indispensable Sarah Langs pointed out that Pirates sophomore Paul Skenes—fresh off his Rookie of the Year season—became the fastest number one draft pick to get his first Opening Day start yet, getting it just two years after he went number one. That beat Mike Moore (1981 daft; 1984 Opening Day) and Stephen Strasburg (2009 draft; 2012 Opening Day).

The bad news: Skenes had a respectable outing on Thursday, only two earned runs against him, but the Marlins managed to turn a 4-1 deficit into a 5-4 win when their left fielder Kyle Stowers walked it off with an RBI single in the bottom of the ninth.

I Can Get Started Dept.: Spencer Torkelson Display—My baseball analysis/historical crush Jessica Brand informs that Spencer Torkelson, Tiger extraordinaire, is the first since 1901 to draw four walks and hit one out in his team’s first regular season game.

Fallen Angels Dept.—Things aren’t bad enough with the Angels as they are? They not only had to lose on Opening Day to last year’s major league worst, and in the White Sox’s playpen. They needed infielder Nicky Lopez to take the mound in the eighth to land the final out of the inning—after the White Sox dropped a five spot Ryan Johnson in his Angels debut. Lopez walked White Sox catcher Korey Lee but got shortstop Jacob Amaya to fly out for the side.

Jessica Brand also reminded one and all that the last time any team reached for a position player to pitch when behind on Opening Day was in 2017, when the Padres called upon Christian Bethancourt with the Dodgers blowing them out.

South Side Reality Checks Cashed Dept.—The White Sox didn’t exactly fill Rate Field on Thursday. (I’m sure I’m not the only one noticing the Freudian side of “Guaranteed” removed from the name.) But those who did attend weren’t going to let little things like a 121-loss 2024 or nothing much done to improve the team this winter stop them.

“It’s delusion that feeds me,” said a fan named JeanneMarie Mandley to The Athletic‘s Sam Blum. “I don’t care . . . I know we suck. I’m not stupid.”

We’re guessing that a hearty enough share of White Sox fans think Opening Day’s 8-1 win over the Angels was a) an aberration; b) a magic trick; c) a figment of their imaginations; or, d) all the above.

Well, That Took Long Enough Dept.—What do Mickey Cochrane, Gabby Hartnett, Ernie Lombardi, Yogi Berra, Roy Campanella, Johnny Bench, Carlton Fisk, Gary Carter, Ted Simmons, and Ivan Rodriguez have in common other than Hall of Fame plaques?

The answer: They never hit leadoff homers on Opening Day in their major league lives. But Yankee catcher Austin Wells did it, this year, on Thursday, sending a 2-0 service from Brewers starter Freddy Peralta into the right field seats to open the way to a 4-2 Yankee win.

“Why doesn’t it make sense?” asked Yankee manager Aaron Boone postgame. Then, he answered: “Other than he’s a catcher and he’s not fast, although actually he runs pretty well for a catcher . . . I think he’s gonna control the strike zone and get on base, too, and he’s very early in his career. I think when we look up, he’s gonna be an on-base guy that hits for some power.”

We’ll see soon enough, skipper.

Don’t Put a Lid On It Dept.—The umps admitted postgame that they missed completely a flagrant rules violation by Yankee center fielder Trent Grisham in the ninth Come to think of it, it seems both the Brewers and the Yankees missed it, even if Brewers fans didn’t.

With a man on, Devin Williams on the mound for the Yankees, and Isaac Collins at the plate for the Brewers, Collins ripped one into the right centerfield gap. Grisham ran it down, removed his hat, and used the hat to knock the ball down after it caromed off the fence, the better to keep the ball from going away from him.

With one and all missing the rules violation, it left Collins on second with a double and the Brewers with second and third—instead of Collins on third with a ground-rule triple and the run scoring. Had anyone seen Grisham’s move and demanded a review, it might have meant just that and, possibly, the Brewers winning the game in the end. Possibly.

Just Juan Game Dept.—Juan Soto’s regular-season Mets debut was respectable: 1-for-3 with two walks and one strikeout. But he didn’t get to score or drive home a run. The Mets, who still have baseball’s best Opening Day winning percentage, lost to the Astros, 3-1, in Houston.

The only serious problem with Soto’s punchout was Astros closer Josh Hader doing it to him with two on in the ninth. Now, try to remember this about that ninth:

* The Mets entered trailing 3-0.
* Hader surrendered two singles and a bases-loading walk to open.
* Then, he surrendered a sacrifice fly by Francisco Lindor to spoil the shutout.
* Hader fell in the hole 3-0 to Soto first.
* Then, he got Soto to look at a strike, foul one off, then swing and miss on a low slider.

That’s how Hader earned an Opening Day save and a 9.00 season-opening ERA. That’s further evidence—and, from the Craig Kimbrel School of Saviourship, of course—that the save is one of the least useful statistics in baseball.

Or: That kind of save is like handing the keys to the city to the arsonist who set the fire from which he rescued all the occupants in the first place.

Blind Justice Dept.—Umpire Auditor reports that Opening Day umpires blew 186 calls. That would average out to about 2.6 blown calls per umpire, I think. Just saying.

Just Wrong Dept.—Is it me, or—aside from the pleasure of only one true blowout (the Orioles flattening the Jays by a ten-run margin)—were there four interleague games on Opening Day?

That’s just plain wrong. It may be an exercise in futility to argue against regular-season interleague play anymore. But the least baseball’s government can do it draw up and enforce a mandate that no interleague games shall be scheduled for Opening Day again. Ever.