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“Angels-Heartache Again”

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Life is so fragile, you, me, your neighbor, a family member, and a baseball player too.

The Angels are dealing with heart ache again, with the unexplained passing of young frontline pitcher Tyler Skaggs, who was found dead in his hotel room on a road trip to Texas, a week ago.

No drug, no foul play, just natural causes, at least that is the theory right now till the toxicological reports are released to his family.

But age 27, who knows, who can explain why. A blood clot, a heart attack, a sleep disorder.

Skaggs, so popular in the clubhouse, a cowboy personality. It took him a lot of starts and stops to get to the Angels rotation. From the Halos to Arizona, back to the Angels, and then finally a fixture in their front line starting rotation.

Players wept. What a scene to see a choked up star outfielder Mike Trout trying to explain his friendship with the fallen pitcher. The same for a tearful Brad Ausmus.

All this for a franchise that ten years ago had to deal with the death of another star young pitcher, Nick Adenhart, his life snuffed out age (22) when his car was hit by a drunk driver, right after a game.

The litany of those who died off the field, who wore the Halo is stunning.

Utilityman Luis Valbuena-killed in a car crash a winter ago in Venezuela in the off season.

Dick Wantz-promising pitcher-dead of a brain tumor in the Angels early years.

Minnie Rojas-relief ace-paralyzed in a mini-bike accident in spring training.

Jim Donahue-pitcher from early Angel years-brain cancer in his 20s.

Chico Ruiz-infield in a car crash.

Mike Miley-former 1st round pick pitcher-killed in car crash

Bruce Heinbechner-pitching prospect perished in a car accident.

Lymon Bostock-star outfielder-gunned down in Chicago in a love triangle in season.

Donnie Moore-ace reliever, fighting depression, killed his wife and then himself in a rage of depression.

On Friday, the Angels start the second half of the season. Uniform #45 will hang in a locker untouched, and respected by all who cross infront of it.

You can tell by the look in the eyes of Trout, Albert Pujols, and so many other Angels, how hard the coming weeks will be.

Not just the battle to climb back into a wildcard playoff race, but to search for the answers, why Tyler Skaggs was taken from them so early in his young career.

Baseball, a lot more complicated than just 100mph fastballs, hits, runs, errors, especially in Anaheim these days.

Angels with a heartache.

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“Memo to Bloggers-Stop the Stupid Stuff”

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Everyone has an opinion, and now most everyone has a way to express it.

The whole world out there has blogs. A ton are developing their own podcasts.

Now they have the freedom to create content, and then to comment on their creation, as if it is fact and they have a valued opinion.

To quote your President Donald Trump….’fake news’

Please.

The latest episodes come from anyone-everyone.

Topics include will the Padres trade relief ace Kirby Yates? Which power hitter out there should the Padres trade for? What can they get for slump ridden Wil Myers? Will San Diego be a seller or a buyer at the trade deadline?

All this, written by people in their bedroom, their garage, their basement. All these authors, so called authorities, have never been inside the Padres clubhouse, in the dugout, or at press conferences or on club conference calls.

The citizens journalists of the world are going crazy with their own content and their own opinions.

Why would the Padres ever entertain thoughts o trading 29-save relief ace Kirby Yates? They have built themselves into a near wildcard team. To get to the next level, you need an established closer. They dealt their last one Brad Hand to the Indians for young catcher Francisco Mejia, who is not quite ready to be an everyday catcher.

There is no closer in the system ready-made. Not Troy Wingenter, prone to episodes of wildness. Surely not 101mph reliever Gerrado Reyes, plagued by walks. Not even the young phenom Andres Munoz, blowing people away in AA-ball.

As one longtime scout told me last week…’yeah they can throw 102 miles an hour but alot of the time they don’t know where the ball is going’.

And why would you think you’d want to package a bunch of your young prospects to trade for an established bat? Why would shipping two or three kids in the system for a short term veteran rental be good business?

And where are you going to play an acquisition, in a crowded infield, or a traffic jammed outfield?

Yes Myers is a huge disappointment, but if you ever got someone hurt, Hunter Renfroe, Manny Margot, Franmil Reyes, you’d need him There is no real established replacement in often hurt Franchy Cordero or even Travis Jankowski, who’d be a diffrence maker.

The best deals come in the off season, when you have real time to shop players, like Wil Myers, and have had time to evaluate with all your scouts, what they saw from prospects in other organizations you might want to do a deal with.

But the bloggers and the podcast people all have these opinions.

The Padres need to quit trading established players for prospects, now they are so close to where they haven’t been in nearly a decade, the playoffs.

They need a well thought out plan to determine if one veteran acquistion can take the team to next level. Dealing Yates now, or even giving up on Myers makes no sense. .

That’s why Bobby Blogger….Peter Podcast should not be taken seriously ever.

The Padres start the 2nd half of the season at (45-45)…on the way towards what I predicted would be an (81-81) season, and real progress. Why mess at all with what has helped with this turnaround?

Let the Padres grow the rest of the season, then determine how to build on it come the off season. This has been a fun first half of the season, and people on the outside want to make changes after all the bad years of baseball we have seen?

Fake News. Faulty opinions. Stop the stupid stuff will you?

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“A Mid Summer Night’s Dream”

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The stars come out tonite in Cleveland. It’s baseball’s iconic All Star Game.

Color, history, electricity.

The best face the best, in what is really more than just an exhibition game.

It’s flair, dynamics, passion.

It started in 1933 as a charity game in Chicago, to raise funds. It marked a beginning of a tradition that no one could derail…not World War II…..Baseball Labor strife…nor even Commissioner Bud Selig.

They play tonite in Cleveland, the annual meeting between the two leagues. Only once, in 1945, was the game postponed.

There have been controversies. Games rained out. Played in the rain. Tie games. Beanballs, ejections, and All Star game shutdown when they ran out of pitchers in the 2002-Selig era.

Even the most absurd, when baseball sponsored two All Star Games from 1959-to-1962.

Then more recently, the Selig driven rule, that the league that won the All Star Game, would have home field advantage for the World Series. Glad that’s gone now.

We remember individual accomplishments, but also the sense of honoring the past, like Tony Gwynn did, escorting Ted Williams, in a wheelchair, to the mound at Fenway Park.

Big days and big plays are what we remember, whether we were a kid, or a 70-year old fan.

Babe Ruth won the first ever game with a home run in that 1933-debut. No one really knew what baseball had stumbled upon with this so-called charity game, that became a treat every summer for fans and players alike.

Big bombs have highlited what we have seen in past July’s.

Tony Perez hit a 15th inning homer in 1967.

Stan Musial of the Cardinals won the game with a blast in 1955

Cal Ripken’s farewell season with the Orioles included an All Star home run forever remembered.

Jackie Robinson became the first colored player to be in the game in 1949, joined by his Brooklyn teammates Don Newcombe, Roy Campanella and the Indians’ Larry Doby.

But it’s the drama, and the accomplishment that forever lives on.

The best moments of all time?

Ted Williams 1946 outing when he went (4-4) coming back from war.

Or Teddy Ballgame’s 3-run home run in the 9th inning, just before baseball went off to war in 1941.

Reggie Jackson, Mr. October, put on a show at Tigers’ Stadium with a 525′ foot home into the light towers, atop the roof in Detroit.

We have video of Pete Rose’s Charley Hustle head first dive, burying Indians catcher Ray Fosse at home plate in 1970.

And you can find the grainy black and white video of King Carl Hubbell of the New York Giants, striking out 5-Hall of Famers in a row, in 1934. Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmuy Foxx, Al Simmons and Joe Cronin all went down swinging at that impossible to hit screwball in the Polo Grounds..

Baseball has made this a week of Mardi-Gras like festivals during the All Star Break. Home Run Derby, the Futures Game, the Fan Fest, and then the game itself.

Sit back, relax, remember, and then enjoy all things baseball, what was done in the past, what we have to look forward to, tonite.

A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream….that keeps recurring every July. A very special time in baseball.

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“Lakers-Clippers–Changing NBA Landscape”

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The earthquake registered 7.1-on the Richter scale…the one east of Bakersfield.

The NBA earthquake registered just as big and probably rocked the foundation of one team more than others.

The LA Clippers have officially arrived with the mega-money signing of Kawhi Leonard and the mega 7-for-1 trade to get Paul George from Oklahoma City.

The Lakers, who earlier had worked a 6-for-1 trade to acquire New Orleans’ Anthony Davis, and dealt 3-young players and more draft picks, to Washington, to get under the salary cap, didn’t get what they wanted, Leonard.

The Clippers weekend had to be the biggest in club history, exceeding the Chris Paul-Blake Griffin era. Definitely bigger than the day the NBA forced out controversial owner Donald Sterling.

The Clippers win turned into another bad Lakers loss. Yes the Purple & Gold are a playoff team with LeBron James and Anthony Davis, but they are not the legendary team they had hoped to be.

The roster has been filled out with fillers like DeMarco Cousins, Danny Green,

You can now talk about the Clippers potential in the same sentence as the great run put together by Golden State.

You won’t have to use phrases, six non-playoff years in a row, when referencing the other team in the building, the Lakers, but there is fallout to be concerned about going forward.

Whereas the Clippers have two stars at the zenith of their careers in Kawhi and George, the Lakers have an aging King James, a star but oft-injured AD, lots of role players, and no future draft picks to fix anything, if anything goes wrong.

Long gone now are the Lakers glory years, stretching from West-Baylor-Chamberlain, thru Magic-Worthy-Cooper…to Kobe-Shaq-Phil.

Long gone too are the inept-disgraceful days of all things Clippers-Donald Sterling, low budget high-controversy times.

The Lakers will be good for a short period of time.

The Clippers could be great for years.

Bet on one thing for sure. A likely Clippers championship banner in that building. You can probably bet also, that whatever success the Lakers have in the next two seasons will be short circuited by the Clippers, and short-lived because of the age issues with the Lake Show.

The landscape has surely changed in the LA market. Here come the Clippers…there goes the Lakers.

That was some earthquake…near Ridgecrest….and the one that shook the basketball court at Staples Center.

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“Good Guy-Deserves Something Good”

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Everybody comes from somewhere, and to get where he’s going, he’s traveled a hard road.

You have to have experienced how hard the road is in the minor leagues, to appreciate where he has now landed.

Dallas Eakins…NHL head coach.

The Anaheim Ducks have a new head coach. The San Diego Gulls have lost their head coach.

Eakins inherits a Ducks franchise screaming for direction, for leadership, for philosophy, for camaraderie, for pride.

That’s what Eakins brought to the San Diego Gulls in just four short seasons, once the American Hockey League dropped a team into the aging Sports Arena, the building that once upon a time rocked and rolled during the hey day of the Western Hockey League.

The building that saw some good hockey in the short life span of the World Hockey Association. The old cement structure that saw the rebirth of the Gulls in places like the IHL, WCHL and ECHL.

You have to want it badly to be where Eakins has been, to appreciate where he has gotten too.

He rode buses and played in places like Moncton, New Brunswick and St. John’s Newfoundland. He wore uniforms in Cincinnati and Chicago too, eating hamburgers, drinking beer, piling up penalty minutes,enduring long bus rides, and hoping for an NHL callup.

Journeyman best describes what he was. He played for 8-different NHL teams, cups of coffee, if you will, but it never doused his spirit, only fueling his desire to learn. He wore 10-different crests on his jerseys in the minors. That’s lot of dedication, long nights, lousy pay, and great uncertainty.

He crossed paths with a legend, Hall of Fame coach Roger Neilsen, Captain Video, an NHL lifer who had great success with the Vancouver Canucks, Rangers, and Flyers, before cancer snuffed out his life.

Eakins learned from the ever eclectic Neilsen, not just strategy, but the psychology of the player, the psyche of success and failure, and the keys to a hockey lifestyle.

The learning curve brought results, a head coaching job with the Toronto Marlies, the Maple Leafs top farmclub. Success there, and a chance to go to the show, the Edmonton Oilers, famous for the Gretzky-Messier-Coffey-Kurri-Fuhr era.

Expectations always high at the Northlands Coliseum-Rexall Place.. Not much reality though.

Eakins staggered in the year and a third he had with the once proud Oilers. They gave him the youngest roster in the NHL, little on defense, virtually no goaltending and expected him to win.

He wasn’t ready, and neither were all the kids he was force feeding on the ice. Taylor Hall, Ryan Nugent Hopkins Jordan Eberle, Nail Yakupov, aged 19-to-22, weren’t ready either. Dispatched by critics, fried by the media, and then fired by those who could not understand how he could go (36-63-14). They’ve gone thru 3-more coaches since then, and have just 1-playoff series appearance in 12-years, even with the generational Connor McDavid on the roster.

He landed in San Diego, thanks to the foresight of another minor league lifer, longtime GM-Bob Ferguson, who scouted, scoped him out, and coached against him in the minors. Enemy, became friend, became confidant, begetting success with the Gulls.

This isn’t just about wins and losses, though the (344-237-64) career record in the AHL is impressive, when you consider the turnstyle rosters AHL teams have with callups, injuries and trades.

It might be the toughest place to coach anywhere. Half the players want out and want to go to the NHL. The other half are pissed they are in the AHL not the NHL, and you never know one day to the next at practice, who is on your roster.

The eclectic Eakins invoked all things learned from Captain Video (Neilsen) about the approach to the game, what the room should be like, and how to push different buttons on different players. He was coaching a global roster, from the US-Canada-Europe-Russia, teeagers to college grads, Canadian juniors to a foreign legion of talent. 1st round picks to fringe people.

It wasn’t just time at the rink, but how you conducted life away from the rink, with the vision of where you wanted to be. Eakins gave his really young roster a blueprint, and challenged them to deal with it.

Last checked, 28-Gulls played up in Anaheim over the last two years, including a core who helped an NHL playoff run, and a host of high draft picks who had good seasons this past winter in San Diego. Yes he was given talent, but yes he molded that talent..

You ask John Gibson, Nick Ritchie, Shea Theodore, Brandon Montour, Kevin Boyle, Kallie Kosilla and a host of other former Gulls, about that coaches impact, and they rave, not just about Xs and Os, but the ABC’s of being a man or a father, a friend or a teammate..

Eakins isn’t the first to leave here to go to the show, but maybe the most successful.. But he leaves a bit of a legacy with a (154-94-23) record with the guys wearing Orange.

Donnie Waddell led the Gulls back to the ice as GM-and-Coach, when it was in the International Hockey League, then played in the far flung West Coast and East Coast Leagues, before the franchise folded in a sea of red-ink.

Waddell is now GM and President of the Carolina Hurricanes. Rick Dudley, a longtime standout player in the NHL-WHA, was here as a coach, and went to Tampa Bay. Mike Ramsey, the ex-Buffalo Sabre, coached here and went back to the Minnesota Wild. Lindy Ruff was here and wound up in Buffalo as head coach.

This won’t be easy. The Ducks have age and injury and salary cap challenges. They have older players who seemed to wave a white flag last year. They have tons of young players, most already schooled in the Eakins Encycolpedia way of doing things.

Anaheim surely isn’t forever down-trodden. But if they can flip Winnipeg, rebuild Montreal, fix Ottawa, overhaul the Kings, or take last place St Louis to the Blues raising the Cup, then Anaheim can rebound.

Violating the rule ‘no cheering in the pressbox’…yes I am. Dallas Eakins caused all this with with his personality, philosophy and hockey lifestyle.

A good guy, a better man, who deserved something good to happen to him, Eakins and the Ducks head coaching job.

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