Lee Lowenfish

The immortal Mets broadcaster Bob Murphy – the man who pronounced “line drive” as “li-on” drive and chortled after a victory about a “happy recap”
– loved to use the phrase “fasten your seat belts” to build up the tense late moments in a game.

With the MLB season less than a month old, it looks like the whole year will be a“Fasten Your Seat Belts” kind of year.
I noted in my last post that the one thing any baseball team must avoid in the long long regular season is not to get buried in April.
The booby prize in 2014 must go so far to the Arizona Diamondbacks who are already double-digit games under .500.

It didn’t help that Arizona opened its season in Australia with two losses to the Dodgers.
LA didn’t exactly enjoy that trip because their ace defending-Cy Young award winner
Clayton Kershaw evidently hurt his back on the return flight and hasn’t pitched since (but is due back soon).
It looks like the Dodgers and the SF Giants will engage in a year-long battle for NL West supremacy.
Colorado hovers around the .500 mark after a bad start.

And thanks to the truly woeful Cubs (yet again) Arizona won a couple in Chicago
as the Windy City nine celebrated the 100th anniversary of Wrigley Field.
How sadly fitting that the Cubs blew a 3-run 9th inning lead on the celebratory day.

Better news in the NL Central comes from baseball’s surprise team, the Milwaukee Brewers who in the early going soared 10 games over .500.
After an unconscionably long road trip, the defending NL champion Cardinals will have some ground to make up.

In the AL West, the Seattle Mariners turned a solid start into a 8-game losing streak and are looking up at division leaders Texas and Oakland.
Seattle and the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim could still be heard from. Every team could contend in this division except the Houston Astros
who are doomed to the basement in another year of rebuilding and falling attendance.

In the division I know the best and obsess about the most, the AL East is off to a predictably bruising start.
Every team, including Toronto whose cagey southpaw Mark Buehrle is already 4-0, could finish first or last.
The Tampa Bay Rays will have to come up with new starters - usually the strength of their team - because
of the season-ending injury to Matt Moore and long layoffs of Alex Cobb and Jeremy Hellickson.

My Orioles managed to split a four-game series in Boston though came close to doing something that even their woeful lineal descendant
St. Louis Browns never accomplished: losing five and six-run leads in back-to-back games.
I know, it is a ridiculous stat but somewhat of an amusing if macabre one.

Fortunately the Birds held on to win the Patriots Day morning clash on Boston Marathon Monday, 7-6. Two things are crystal clear in the early going:
1) Shaky Oriole starters must get into at least the seventh inning more often or the bullpen will be worn out by Memorial Day.
2) The return of Manny Machado to fortify the lineup and the defense must happen soon (early May the target). But I hope and pray
that he and the team are first confident about the condition of his surgically repaired knee.

The Yankees with their $400 million in free agent expenditures - outfielders Jacoby Ellsbury and Carlos Beltran, catcher Brian McCann,
and Japanese pitcher Masahiro Tanaka all playing well - look like a team to beat. And it will be a pleasure to do that as the year unfolds.

Will be seeing the Orioles in early May in Minnesota, my first trip to the new Target Field. One of the feel-good stories of the young season is
the emergence of Chris Colabello as a huge run producer in the Twins lineup. Have to wish the best (except against the Orioles) for a player
like Colabello who was signed out of an independentleague.

The weekend before I'm heading for the climactic pair of doubleheaders between my alma mater Columbia and Penn.
They are the two best teams in the 2014 Ivy League but only one will qualify for the league championship series
and the right to play in the NCAA tournament that begins in late May.

The prize at the end is the 12-day double-elimination College World Series in Omaha in mid-June.
As a lover of acronyms, let me close today with what Omaha means to eager college players.
Opportunity
Makeup
Attitude
Hustle
Always Put The Team First

That’s all for now. Always remember: Take it easy but take it.
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Last post, dear blog readers, I commented that I didn’t see how the Red Sox, Cardinals, or Dodgers could lose based on the way they were playing recently – in the case of the Red Sox the way they were playing all year.

Well, someone had to lose in the St. Louis-Los Angeles NLCS and the Dodgers were spanked in the deciding 6th game, 9-0. LA did have two bona fide aces in Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke but somehow the Cardinals have been able to beat Kershaw throughout his budding first-rate career. He lost Game 2 in this year’s NLCS and was the victim of the 9-0 rout.

The Cardinals continue to amaze with their ability to find answers within their farm system for departed and injured players. First, when Albert Pujols bolted to the Angels in free agency after the 2011 season, they found homegrown Allen Craig to replace him. When Craig suffered a foot injury late this season, burly Matt Adams, a low round draft pick from Slippery Rock University in western Pennsylvania, stepped in as a very capable replacement. Craig may be ready for the World Series to give a boost to the Cardinals’ sometimes spotty offense.

And their young pitchers have deservedly the talk of baseball. Michael Wacha was pitching for Texas A & M as late as spring 2012 but he was the NLCS MVP for his two victories against the Dodgers. To make matters even sweeter for the Cardinals is that Wacha was drafted with the pick the Redbirds received for losing Albert Pujols as a so-called “premium” free agent.

It was fitting that the Red Sox did in the Tigers with two crushing grand slams at Fenway because they have been winning dramatic games coming from behind all season. Fitting also that closer Koji Uehara was the ALCS MVP because he has been amazingly consistent since he took over the closer’s role early in the summer.

I find it amusingly ironic that Uehara used to boast bushy muttonchops but now has virtually displays a baby-faced look while beards grow all around him. Uehara is 38 but the new cleaner-shaved look has him seem half his age.

I am sure the Orioles and the Rangers rue that they let Uehara go but Baltimore can take a little solace in knowing that they received Chris Davis, the new HR champion of baseball, and reliable reliever Tommy Hunter in the trade for him. I am also amused that Uehara to some seems like an Irish name while, of course, he is a veteran of many successful years in the Japanese major leagues. And Darren O’Day, a valuable Orioles reliever, is not Irish but a Polish-American from Chicago.

The Red Sox have the home field advantage in the World Series and I thought it would be a factor against Detroit and it could be again in the upcoming battle with St. Louis.
But if Allen Craig can contribute and the young Cardinals keep up their smooth playing, I like them in five or six.

On the other hand, for those of you all enough to remember the 1946 World Series, maybe it will go seven games and unlike Johnny Pesky, Dustin Pedroia will not hold onto the ball too long and throw out a key run at the plate in behalf of the Red Sox cause.

Back to you when the hot stove league really picks up. For now: always remember to take it easy but take it.
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