baseball blog 2002 will contract with tony's busblog starting next week.
its been a fun month and a half, but obviously the attention paid to this fine topic is not what it should be.
baseball blog 2002 was originally intended to fill a nitch.
that nitch has been nicely filled by many many baseball blogs that do a much better job of covering our national pasttime on a daily basis than i.
my apologies to anyone who feels slighted by this change, but i would never want to give anyone a less than quality product.
Cubs all the way,
tony

sometimes i just can't get it together. today is one of those days. so let's talk about Ken Griffey.

there was a great feature about the slugger through AP today, i'm going to put it in here and if AP wants me to pull it i will, but its a great story about a hometown hero being given one last chance in his hometown.

sometimes cash money millionaires dont like to be put on the spot when theyre still hurt.

im not sure which side im on on this one. on one hand i can understand Cincy's impatience. on the other hand, if a guy's hurt, he's hurt.

nobody wants to be healthy and hit homers more than Junior.

By Joe Kay
AP Sports Writer

CINCINNATI -- Ken Griffey Jr. didn't want to talk about his injured knee -- or much of anything else. The terse answers suggested he was seething about something.

Frustration over his latest injury, perhaps?

"No," he said Monday. "There's a few more issues than that. I'd rather not say."

Moments later, it gushed out. The Cincinnati Reds' outfielder said he's tired of how he's been treated by fans and the media in his hometown the last three years.

"I came here to play and it's like I've been fighting an uphill battle every day," said Griffey, the words spilling out with an angry edge. "Am I frustrated about my injury? No, because I know it's going to get better and I'll go out and play. Am I frustrated about people taking shots at me? Yeah.

"I'm tired of it. It's been three years now -- not one, not a half year, not a year and a half. It's been three."

That's how long he's been home.

The city embraced Griffey when he accepted a below-market contract -- $116.5 million for nine years -- to come home in a February 2000 trade with the Seattle Mariners.

Now, many of those fans are wondering whether the trade was worthwhile, and Griffey is wondering a few things as well.

"I get consistently beat up for no reason," he said, sitting in his locker after batting practice. "It's been happening since the very first day I got here, and I'm tired of it. You try to bend over backward to do the right thing, and it just seems to get thrown in my face.

"I came here to play baseball. I took less money. I didn't whine or anything, and this is the thanks I get? I don't need that."

It hasn't been a heartwarming homecoming for Griffey, who bristled at all the attention he got in 2000 and spent much of last season recovering from a torn hamstring.

He was upbeat this spring, even after former teammates said the club's chemistry was damaged when he showed up in Cincinnati. The Reds won 96 games in 1999, the year before he arrived, but went into a slide and lost 96 last season.

He tore the patella tendon in his right knee April 7. While he got therapy, the club went on a winning streak that pushed the Reds into first place in the NL Central.

A local TV station conducted a poll asking which player should sit when Griffey is able to return. Griffey was one of the choices, and was picked by 74 percent of the fans.

That's what set him off.

"I don't think anybody has even given me a chance to know who I am and my personality," Griffey said. "I'm the person that gets beat up the most -- for what? For no reason."

Griffey said he's been treated worse in Cincinnati than he was in Seattle.

"It's not even close," he said. "You talking about little New York here?"

He said it's gotten so bad that his wife and children don't come to Cinergy Field because of comments they hear.

Asked for an example, Griffey said a fan told his wife, '"You can go back to Seattle and take your husband with you.' And that was in the family section, so you can imagine how I felt about that.

"I've got to sit here and try to get my family to come see me because they don't like it here because of some of the stuff that's been said to them. That gets old real quick."

Asked whether it's bad enough that he wants to leave his hometown, Griffey said, "I just want to play. I just want to get back on the field."

It's still unclear when that might happen. Griffey started jogging last week, but has problems with the knee when he comes to a stop.

Dr. Timothy Kremchek said Griffey will run, jump and work on quick starts this week, providing a better idea of when he might be back.

"We'll see how he does over the next seven to 10 days," Kremchek said Monday. "He's doing great, but we don't want to rush him."

Manager Bob Boone said he's "coveting" the day Griffey can play again, and he doesn't understand all the talk about the Reds being better off without him.

"It's laughable to me," Boone said. "When you go through a stretch like we have, when you're not hitting, having Junior in there makes a huge difference. It's gigantic."

thanks to john, we now know
that today is willie mays's birthday.
thanks john.
and thanks, willie.

the seattle mariners are immune to Baseball Blog 2002's curse. But we all know that they're monsters during the regular season.

So let's talk about the comeback player of the year nominee Rueben Sierra who has 36 hits in 27 games which is a league-leading .371 batting average.

Sierra is taking advantage of Edgar Martinez's trip to the DL, and doing a fine job filling the #5 spot at DH clearing the bases after mike cameron and john olerud do their damage. Only Ichiro has more hits (39), which shouldnt be surprising since the last time Sierra hit .300 was when the last George Bush was in office.

The 36 year old switch-hitter pounded 23 homers with the Rangers last season in 94 games in his abbreviated comeback after being bounced around 6 AL and 1 NL clubs from '94-'98, missing the entire '99 season due to injury.

Although Sierra has only hit 3 homers this season so far, don't expect him to lose his spot in the line-up once Martinez returns in early June. Sierra will probably play left field and replace the struggling Desi Relaford.

The Mariners havent seemed to miss Martinez, completing a sweep of the Yankees this weekend, and living off their bats as their starting pitching has floundered.