A sad day for baseball

Tragedy struck the baseball world Thursday morning, as Angels 22-year-old rookie Nick Adenhart, hours removed from making his season debut, died in a car crash.  In just his fourth-ever big-league start, Adenhart threw six shutout innings against the Athletics and left with his team leading 3-0, only to see the Angels’ bullpen surrender the lead and lose 6-4.

Sadly, Adenhart is not the first active player in recent memory to lose his life prematurely.

Darryl Kile was found dead in his Chicago hotel room in 2002.

Cory Lidle crashed a small plane into a New York apartment building in 2006.

Josh Hancock crashed a car into a tow truck in 2007.

Joe Kennedy died suddenly of hypertensive heart disease in 2007.

All five players, coincidentally, were pitchers.

Bad for Ball hits a new low

After a long offseason, spring has finally arrived and baseball is back.  Good for Ball.  Opening Day getting rained out (Red Sox – Rays) or snowed out (White Sox – Royals), on the other hand, is Bad for Ball.  Neither rain nor snow, however, compares to a ballgame having to be postponed for a team tragedy.  The Angels family lost a promising young prospect who for all we know may have been the next Cy Young.  Very Bad for Ball.

Anniversary of a historic event

Wednesday marked the 35^th anniversary of Hank Aaron’s 715^th home run.  On April 8, 1974, Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s record, which had stood for nearly 40 years since Ruth’s retirement from the game in 1935.  While Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier and it is widely believed that Willie Mays was a better player, Hammerin’ Hank will forever be remembered as one of the most influential African Americans in sports history.

Asian pitchers face-off

Baltimore pitcher Koji Uehara made his major league debut against Chien-Ming Wang and the Yankees in each team’s second game of the season.  Though it was certainly not the first time two Asian pitchers (Uehara is Japanese and Wang hails from Taiwan) have opposed each other in the United States (in fact Wang surely faced Daisuke Matsuzaka at some point over the last two years), has it ever happened on Opening Day?  As far as I can tell, the answer is no.  This should not come as a huge surprise, seeing as there never seem to be very many Asian starting pitchers in MLB at any one time.  Hiroki Kuroda of the Dodgers was L.A.’s opening day starter on Monday but the Padres threw ace Jake Peavy.  Hideo Nomo and Hideki Irabu, despite changing teams a number of times, somehow managed to pitch in different leagues for the duration of Irabu’s big-league tenure.  Kazuhiro Sazaki was a closer.  Byung-Hyun Kim (South Korea) was awful as a starter and would not have been given the honor of starting on Opening Day.  If Japan’s Yu Darvish is allowed to sign with the Yankees in the near future, it is entirely possible that he would take on Matsuzaka and the Red Sox on Opening Day in one of the next few years.

Latin American pitchers, by contrast, are much more common in MLB, so I was not surprised at all that Francisco Liriano of the Twins went up against Felix Hernandez of the Mariners on Monday.

O’s Notes

It doesn’t matter what happens from here on out.  The O’s beat the Yankees’ biggest acquisition on Opening Day and that can’t be undone.