Ball Four*

* with apologies to Jim Bouton...

BALL ONE.
Well, I have good news and bad. It concerns a correction from last week, when I erroneously stated that the Washington Nationals were still owned by Major League Baseball. While it's true that Bud "The Cowardly, Lyin'" Selig and his crew did run that franchise (into the ground) for more than four years, they no longer do: The Nationals were sold to a group headed by Ted Lerner last July.

So the good news is that ol' Bud is no longer the officially unofficial but no less ultimate runner of the show for any National League franchise-- unless, of course, you count the Brewers, wink wink. Commissioners, you see, are not supposed to (officially) be owners, wink wink. Conflict of (official) interest, don'tcha know. Of course, that didn't stop Bud from maintaining (official) ownership of the Brewers during his entire six-year tenure as the Acting (unofficial?) Commissioner of Baseball... but I guess we're not supposed to officially count that, either. In that same spirit, I propose that we don't officially count Ben Sheets' two-hit, complete-game victory over the Dodgers on Opening Day. Sound fair?

Anyway, the good news is that MLB no longer owns the Nationals. The bad news is that that's the only good news I've heard concerning the Commissioner in quite some time...

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BALL TWO.
Speaking of the Dodgers...
Charlie Steiner, a former ESPN anchor and current play-by-play voice of the Dodgers, has a two-hour radio show called The Baseball Beat on XM. It airs every weekday at 1:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. Since following the Dodgers all over the country makes Steiner's schedule pretty hectic, he is often and ably filled-in-for by a consummate Professional Broadcaster named Chuck Wilson.

The format is simple: Steiner or Wilson converse with, on a rotating basis, all the various beat writers (from all the various newspapers) who travel with and cover all the various teams, everyday. With Professional Broadcasters interviewing Professional Writers, the show is blessedly bereft of jocks, ex-jocks-turned-broadcasters and ex-jocks-turned-coaches/managers, which means that everyone on the show --you're not going to believe this-- everyone on the show is actually able to put their thoughts into words. In complete sentences, no less!

Until they go to commercial, of course. Fortunately, though, there aren't many commercials: Since the program displays a few too many glimmers of intelligence for the average quarter hour, listenership is low.

But anyway...
Last week, I heard Chuck Wilson interviewing Paul Hagan of the Philadelphia Daily News. Hagan told an amusing little anecdote from Phillies camp, and it involves a former member of the [Censored], [Unutterable], [Blasphemous] [Stool-samples]...

William Savage is a strapping, six-foot-five, two hundred ten pound right-hander who grew up in southern California and attended the University of Oklahoma on a Baseball scholarship. Drafted by Philadelphia, he spent most of last summer in the South Atlantic League-- low A-ball. When he was invited to Phillies camp this spring, he knew he didn't have much of a shot at making the major league roster. That didn't stop him, however, from setting a goal for himself: To go the entire Grapefruit League season without walking a batter.

When Savage showed up at camp, he readily told anybody who would listen --and, no doubt, more than a few who wouldn't-- about his rather modest yet worthy goal. At least one veteran right-hander was paying attention...

You might remember Jon Lieber; it hasn't been all that long. Lieber won 20 games for the C.U.B.S. back in 2001, but elbow problems cut short his season the following year. I don't know whether Tribune Ink said, "Good luck and thanks for playing," or simply sent him a form letter, but they certainly wasted no time at all in giving the man who had so recently been their ace the ol' heave-ho.

Lieber underwent ligament replacement surgery, and the subsequent rehab kept him on the shelf for more than a year. He pitched for the Yankees in 2004. Since then, he seems to have found a home with the Phillies. In the three seasons since his comeback, he has thrown 563 innings and, despite a 4.46 ERA, has a won-lost record of 40-32. If those numbers don't exactly strike you as stellar, consider this: In those same three years, Kerry Wood has thrown just 226 innings, and has a record of 12-15 (ERA 3.90). Oh, and here's another stat: Whereas Kerry Wood has --ahem!-- "earned" an average of over nine million dollars per season for the last three years, Jon Lieber has averaged about five million.

But anyway...
William Savage's goal of not walking anybody was going alright until, one day, he found himself in a 3-and-2 count. He got the ball back from his catcher, palmed it, shoved his glove under his armpit and began rubbing the baseball while he took a walk around the mound, collecting his thoughts. He may or may not have noticed his teammate Jon Lieber, watching the game from the cab of his big-[donkey] truck, which was parked just beyond the low Tru-link fence that surrounded the field.

Savage put his glove back on and popped the ball into the pocket. He climbed atop the mound, took a deep breath, got the sign from his catcher, went into his wind-up: The arms swung high, the back arched, the right foot slipped into the slot, the pivot, and then that complicated, sequential explosion of muscles needed to propel a five-ounce, leather-covered spheroid with more speed and action than the laws of physics say is possible...

At just that instant, Jon Lieber sounded what we can only surmise is a really loud-[donkey] horn.

Savage's pitch sailed all the way to the backstop.

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BALL THREE.
How long to you suppose it will be before ESPN's Chris Berman refers to that new Boston pitcher as "'Andrew' Daisuke Matsuzaka"?

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BALL FOUR.
Bud "No Balls" Selig must go.