Author: lleonardbw

by Amaury Pi Gonzalez

ANAHEIM–The red hot Royals are eight games in first place in the American League Central with a half game lead over the second place Detroit Tigers. The A’s who are in the middle of a four game series with the Royals dropped the first game on Monday night 3-2. The Giants were swept over the weekend by the Royals in three games.

The Giants entertain the Chicago White Sox for two games starting on Tuesday night and the Sox come into AT&T with probably the rookie of the year Jose Abreu who has 31 home runs and is hitting .306. The Sox also have Chris Sale who’s 10-2 with an ERA of 2.14 and is a great left handed pitcher. You have a lot of stuff going on there and for the Giants to beat them it’s going to be tough.

The Giants haven’t played that well this year, it’s hard to win a pennant with Triple A players let’s face it the Giants Joe Panik at second and newly aquired catcher Andrew Susac the Giants have a bunch of kids there and they haven’t had a great year. Giant third baseman Pablo Sandoval and catcher Buster Posey haven’t had a great year.

The Giants swept by the Royals and the A’s could be battling the Royals tooth and nail in this four game series as the Royals have an All-Star team with such big boppers in the line up like, Lorenzo Cain .301, Jarrod Dyson .286, and Alex Gordon .279. The Royals are getting great pitching help from Wade Davis 6-2, Aaron Crow 5-1, James Shields 11-6.

Racer Tony Stewart under investigation: Kevin Ward’s death was due to “massive blunt trama” by New York medical authorites, Ward was ran over by NASCAR driver Tony Stewart, an Ontario medical examiner who performed an autopsy on Ward found that that Ward was killed by massive blunt trama as a result of Stewart’s car rear end catching Ward and dragging him and sending him to the sidelines face up. Some that watched the video say that Ward may not ever know what even hit him as the impact was forceful and quick and it was over in less than three seconds.

It was reported that Ward was dead before he even reached the hospital, Ward had been clipped by Stewart and spun out near the wall, Ward came out onto the race track pointing towards Stewart’s on coming car on the return lap and it appeared that Stewart swirved and his rear caught Ward and Ward was dragged a few feet and landed face up on the side of the dirt track. The coroner examiner didn’t say if Ward was dead when he was face up on the track but he was checked on the ambulance going to the hospital and it was reported that he was already dead.

Clippers ownership change should put the Sterling era to rest: The Clippers now are hoping that they can focus on playing hoops and forget about their problems from former owner Donald Sterling. The time that I was doing the play by play at the Clippers there was no indication from where we sat as broadcasters that Sterling harbored such feelings about minorities which he spoke about in the V.Stiviano recordings.

A couple of times when walking down the hallway he smiled at me and I smiled back, there are people here in the Southland that only speak Spanish and specifically those who worked at Staples Arena and they didn’t claim to have had a problem with him during those years when I worked there. There are about one million people who speak Spanish in the Southland and he never made any remarks or said anything about Spanish speaking people while I worked for the Clippers.

Most of the time Sterling came into the buidling really late and he owned the team so he could come in anytime he wanted. The Clippers sponsors who threatened to leave if Sterling didn’t leave will come back, right now the Clippers are the number one team and the Lakers have taken a back seat but that may not last long everybody loves a winner. Steve Ballmer an ex-Mircosoft CEO has taken over as owner of the Clippers, he bought the team for $2 billion from Sterling’s wife Shelly.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the Spanish TV voice for L.A. Angels baseball and does News and Commentary each week for http://www.sportsradioservice.com

by Michael Duca

OAKLAND–The game between the Oakland A’s and Minnesota Twins was a nail biter right down to the end and the A’s got contriubtions up and down the line up. The A’s won two straight and A’s pitchers Luke Gregerson has given up only one run in his first game and Sean Doolittle everytime he’s come out he has produced some ridiculous numbers his ERA is at 2.33.

Doolittle has an A’s record for saves by a lefthander at 18 and Friday night set a franchise record for consecutive scoreless innings at 28 2/3 innings the previous record was at 27 2/3 set in June 1998. The A’s improved their lead in the American League West at 3 1/2 games.

One thing that surprised me after A’s manager Bob Melvin picked up his 800th career win on Friday night was that they did not hire a clown to celebrate the win knowing how much Melvin has a fear of clowns and that no one came in with a big red nose and got up and came in and congratulated Melvin. As Melvin said himself after the game it was just another round number after 799.

When you think of how many baseball games have been played and how many managers that have achieved 800 it’s not a bad thing to be in the top 100 manager in wins, “each and every year. I thnk you take a little bit of stock in what you need to do to get better and how to relate to the players, kind of change with the times, more than anything else.” said Melvin

Giants update: The Kansas City Royals who have won five straight and have won 13 of their last 16 games and are 2 1/2 games behind the Detroit Tigers in the A.L. Central. Which means their challenging the Angels, A’s and Tigers for a spot in the playoffs and the Royals are also bidding for 66-77 wins in that range. They have 61 wins as of Saturday.

The Royals are a very good ball club and in particular everybody in the San Francisco knows how good the Giants pitching is and everybody in the Oakland knows how great the A’s bull pen has been well either team can hold a candle to Kansas City. The Royals might be the best yet that I’ve ever seen, they’ve got seven, eight, nine, inning guys average throwing 90 MPH.

They’ve got pitching from guys who can rush it up there at 102 MPH and they can throw a diving two seam sinker at 95 MPH and they can throw a wicked change up besides. The Royals pitcher Wade Davis a reliever has an ERA going into Saturday’s game of 0.95 and is 6-2. Then the Royals closer has off the charts numbers 1-2 with an wicked ERA of 1.81. So if your behind the Royals you are in deep, deep trouble and the Giants made a mistake of getting behind in the seventh inning on Friday night in their loss to the Royals 4-2 coughing up two runs.

Brandon Belt concussion update: Belt seems to be directly in the spotlight of the most star crossed player in baseball this year. Were talking about a player who suffers a fracture and then rehabs and getting ready to come back and was taking extra infield and had a player throw a ball to him at the same time a coach hit a ball to him and the batted ball bounced up to him and hit him in the face and rang his bell.

Belt tried to make a comeback on Wednesday night in Milwaukee but struck out four times and was reshelved again. He was diognoised with post concussion syndrome by Dr.Anthony Saglimbeni who tested Belt for concussion syndrome and Belt failed each of the tests administered and was flown back to San Francisco.

Michael Duca does A’s and Giants commentary each week for http://www.sportsradioservice.com

by Jerry Feitelberg and Amaury Pi Gonzalez

OAKLAND–The election for a new MLB Commissioner is coming up on August 14th and any sense of a non political transisition might not be in the cards. Sources in baseball say that Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig is endorsing his right hand man for most of his 22 years as Commissioner Rob Manfred who is MLB’s Chief Operating Officer. Manfred for the most part supported all of the decisions coming from Selig and the handling by baseball in the BALCO/steroids scandal that took almost ten years to discover, investigate and enforce new drug rules that was just the beginning of a long line of doping policies formed.

If former San Francisco Giant Barry Bonds was the face of the BALCO scandal than currently suspended New York Yankee Alex Rodriguez is the face of the Biogenesis case. A-Rod is out for the season after his second infraction for use of banned substances and he was found out by Federal agents to be receiving such enhancements from Florida distributor Biogensis who also supplied current Met’s pitcher Bartolo Colon and the Blues Jays slugger Melky Cabrera.

Federal agents just recently arrested Biogensis Founder Anthony Bosch on Tuesday for distribuition, Bosch in testomonies before sang like a bird and helped name some minor league and MLB players in the distribution ring. A-Rod who fought this season’s suspension even threatening to sue baseball relented and drop his lawsuit against MLB and accepted the year long suspension for this season was named by Bosch in the sting. Colon and Cabrera are not off the hook yet if in the ongoing investigation by the feds find that they’ve received any more banned substances since their last suspensions.

How this will ties into the choice of baseball’s next Commissioner? That will be decided next week and may might make a huge difference. Manfred critics claim he was Selig’s right hand man and Selig acted slowly in getting a drug policy instituted and it litterally took an act of Congress to get Selig to testify and promise the Congressional listening body to get some teeth to baseball’s new drug policy and form it’s own doping invstigative department headed by Senator George Mitchell.

Biogenesis couldn’t have happened at a worse time for Selig and Manfred with the election coming up and with the Bosch arrest as baseball is about to take a vote for the next Commissioner and Manfred has been named as the lead choice to be next Commissioner. 12 unnamed players will be named soon in the federal investigation of receiving banned substances from the Coral Gables lab and this would be the second major distribution case that will be in baseball’s lap since BALCO.

Baseball owners Jerry Reinsdorf of the White Sox and Artie Moreno of the Los Angeles Angels have been named to be campaigning for Boston Red Sox Chairman Tom Werner who is outside of the Selig circle and Moreno and Renisdorf want to block any chance for Manfred to get elected as next Commissioner it will take eight Werner votes to make that happen. Selig’s handling of baseball’s drug policy was too little too late, it should have been nipped in the bud during the McGwire-Sosa home run derby era in 1998 but baseball was having a resissance recovering from the bad publicity of the 1994 canceled baseball strike shorten season.

With Bosch being photograghed and making the front page tabloids of some of the New York papers being led away by Federal officers Tuesday it sure doesn’t bode well for the Commissioner’s election this August 14th. Moreno and Reinsdorf maybe onto something here with their attempts to get the other owners to make a huge change in the top administration levels of baseball and set a new tone with a baseball political outsider who was not in the MLB office when all this was going down in trying to elect Werner.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the Spanish radio voice of Oakland A’s baseball and Jerry Feitelberg covers A’s baseball for http://www.sportsradioservice.com

by Amaury Pi Gonzalez

LOS ANGELES–With the upcoming election for the next Major League Baseball Commissioner Los Angeles Angels and Chicago White Sox owners Artie Moreno and Jerry Renisdorf are ready to campaign against Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig’s top choice and frontrunner for the job Rob Manfred. The owners will hold elections next week on August 14th where the winner must get 23 of 30 of the vote. Moreno and Reinsdorf are pushing for the other candidate to win Boston Red Sox Chairman Tom Werner. If Moreno and Reinsdorf can get eight votes for Werner it would block Manfred from becoming the next commissioner.

I’m not a big fan of Selig but I wish him nothing but the best in his retirement in January 2015 he lacked the leadership under the steroids era and he came to the party a little too late. Then again money talks and you know the rest walks, the owners like him because he ruled over the tremendous era of prosperity.

One of the best candidates for the job should be the General Manager of the Detroit Tigers Dave Dombrowski would be a terrific commissioner, another guy who would be a good commissioner Joe Torre. Torre the former Dodgers manager was watching batting practice at Dodgers Stadium on Tuesday night he works as baseball’s disciplinarian.

I prefer not to see Manfred get the job baseball should get somebody who is dynamic, well known, Torre will be that type of guy, Selig is getting old 79 and you want somebody younger to run the game. Last year in Anaheim when the Tigers came to town I got to speak with Dombrowski and I know him well when he used to run the Miami Marlins before coming to Detroit.

I asked Dombrowski point blank if he would like to be MLB Commissioner? He said,”I would not do a campaign for it but if they asked me I would consider it.” So that means yes when a General Manager who has a lot of pull with the Detroit Tigers says he would take the job. There’s many good young people out there and when I say young people I don’t mean people under 25 but Dombrowski has experience.

Dombrowski is 58 years old and Torre is 74, but baseball could do better than Manfred as successor to Selig,I’d like to see a different face there I like to see somebody that really knows baseball that knew the game that knows the game like Dombrowski and Torre. One of those guys, somebody mentioned to me about NBC Sports talent Bob Costas he’s a broadcaster he lives in St.Louis he knows the game he’s well respected.

I want somebody whose been inside the game and I’m throwing my hat in the ring for Dombrowski, and there are so many qualified people out there but I hate to see somebody who would be a rubber stamp like Manfred with the same kind of politics as Selig. I wish the Commissioner all the best and in a few months he’s going to retire but I think we could do better.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the Spanish TV voice for Los Angeles Angels baseball and does News and Commentary each week for http://www.sportsradioservice.com