Category: Oakland Athletics

by Michael Duca

SCOTTSDALE AZ–26 year old Cincinnati Reds starting pitcher Aroldis Chapman who had surgery for a ball hitting him above the left eye and nose by Royals catcher Salvador Perez, was declared by doctors as a very lucky young man. This is a very hard thing for me to talk about because I was there in that ball park when it happened that night.

What was about to happen some how was so crystal clear to me that I screamed out “Oh my God” in the pressbox just before Chapman went down which was before he was hit by the ball. Pitchers today tend to throw a little bit sideways and fall off to the side, they don’t land in the kneeling position or finish the throw with the glove in front of their faces.

To look at the old baseball cards from the 50s and 60s and the pitchers posed the way that they threw and you actually saw the pitcher winding up with the glove actually in front of their face there was a reason for that. The sound that was made in the stadium was unbelievable and the fact that was the last sound heard in that stadium until the ambulance drove up 12 minutes later was even more amazing.

There were 7,000 in the park and there was dead silence the entire time, Chapman is a very lucky guy and if the ball had struck him maybe as little as a quarter of an inch to one side to the other instead of hitting the heavy bone above his left eye and hit directly over the bone that supports your nose and gripped into his sinuses which could be fatal.

This is a terrible thing and this is a risk that players take and this is more than they take out on the field, personally I would like to see pitchers grilled in youth baseball on their mechanics and you finish up square and you give yourself a fighting chance to deflect something like that with a glove.

You also have to feel for Perez this is a young 23 year old rising star catcher a solid defensive player a great hitter for an up and comning Kansas City team and the first thing you have to do is work on how this and how this is going to effect him and tell him he was just doing his job. Chapman was all over the place in that inning he had already walked four hitters in that inning.

Chapman had loaded the bases and then reloaded the bases again and I haven’t heard of anyone talking to Perez, the press or the players. I didn’t get a chance to talk to Kansas City PR Director Mike Swanson about how Perez was taking it. It’s a hard, hard thing for him to know that he caused a career threatening or life threatening injury to someone else.

The news was good about Chapman on Friday they were able to insert the titanium plate to help stablize his eye socket and he could be able to throw as little as 14 days and he could be back on the mound as little as two months.

Michael Duca is covering the Cactus League in Arizona for Sportstalk radio

Amaury Pi-González

“That’s Amaury News and Commentary”

PHOENIX–One of the nice things about baseball, is that if you stay long enough, and the good Lord gives you a long life, you can have a lot of experiences, seen thousands of games, and talk to people who have not, and either were not born, or just in another line of work.

The 1989 baseball season for the A’s was a truly unforgettable season. Just to think that it culminated with an earthquake and against the Giants, is enough to make a movie, not like Money-ball, but a very interesting one nonetheless, and with a lot of real drama.

As I walk in the Athletics press box during the years, I find more and more people that were 2 years old, not born, or not following baseball in 1989 and that memorable year. But most people alive today, that were 8 years or so in 1989 here in the Bay Area, remember one thing; they remember what they were doing on October 17, 1989 around 5:05 PM.

Some of us where working the game at Candlestick Park, my young engineer was Erwin Higueros, now broadcasting Giants games, my broadcast partner was Evelio Areas Mendoza, he is living and retired in Nicaragua.

I remember just a year before 1989, Gene Hogan, General Manager of KNTA 1430AM radio in Santa Clara called me to his office, as I was doing Sports there and told me he wanted to introduced me to a young disc jockey who loved baseball, Erwin was working the midnight to 5 AM shift, playing music for lonely people.

Most people(not all) who listen to music on the radio those hours are lonely, suffer from insomnia, or simply have no life.

Evelio Mendoza,I knew from the early 1980’s when I was sports director of KIQI 1010 AM radio in San Francisco. In those years KIQI 1010AM featured live news,traffic,weather and sports for four hours each morning. I knew Evelio could do baseball, because I listened to his tapes of play by play from the Nicaraguan leagues, prior to arriving in the United States.

The three of us were installed almost with our heads touching the roof at Candlestick Park, a real auxiliary broadcast booth, just built for that World Series. Evelio suffered from high blood pressure and after the first shake, I looked at his face it was as red as a tomato, I thought he was having a heart attack. Erwin much younger, looked at me very scared and didn’t know what to do, we lost our broadcast line and we were “off the air”like most stations doing remote from Candlestick that afternoon.

After the game was stopped by the quake, we were informed by then Commissioner Fay Vincent that the Series will be “postponed” as it was for eleven days.

I had to drive from San Francisco to Fremont, where I had my house, there was my wife,and my two sons 10 and 9 years old. The Bay Bridge was closed, and it was complete mayhem, as I had to drive the 101 south all the way to the Dumbarton Bridge, with very very heavy traffic, to get home.

Just outside of Candlestick Park next to the freeway, there was A’s superstar José Canseco filling his car tank with gasoline, and he was wearing his uniform. I had to stop at my parents retirement home in the San Francisco Mission District first. They were very nervous but doing well, I then had to drive to Fremont. It took me all afternoon to get back home. I think I got home like at 10:30 maybe later.

This season the Oakland A’s will have a 1989 reunion on July 19, World Series Champion team. Yes, it has been almost 25 years since that memorable World Series, which the A’s took by sweeping the San Francisco Giants in four games.

The Oakland Athletics broadcast team that 1989 World Series: On the radio: Bill King who died in 2005, and Lon Simmons, retired and living in Maui, Hawaii. Monte Moore and Ray Fosse on television. Amaury Pi-González and Evelio Areas Mendoza on Spanish radio. Today some 25 years later, Ray Fosse and yours truly are currently, the only ones remaining on the Oakland Athletics broadcast.

Amaury Pi-González is Spanish play by play announcer for the Oakland Athletics,KIQI 1010AM radio and also travels to Anaheim were he is play by play in Spanish for Fox Sports West/Prime TIcket, Angels television.

That’s Amaury’s News and Commentary

PHOENIX–Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Brian Wilson will not be the Dodgers closer this season he’s coming off that surgery from last season and is now working with throwing the knuckle ball. Wilson won’t be pitching in the ninth he’s not that power guy he was when he was with the Giants when they won that first World Series in 2010.

Wilson is still a good pitcher he throws strikes, he’s a character, the fans love him in L.A. with his beard and haircut. He’s working with a change up and the knuckle ball and Wilson is reinventing himself and he’s coming out with a new pitch where he can develop a change up he could be a very useful pitcher for the Dodgers.

The Dodgers are loaded the oddsmakers are picking the Dodgers to make the World Series this season forget the division and the league championship. They do have a great team and their free of injuries and their bullpen is a great bullpen and for Wilson the plan is for him to pitch in the eighth inning.

Maybe he would spend sometime in the seventh depending on the game situaton but he’s not a power pitcher or the workhorse that he was when he was with the Giants, he’s not a closer. He might close a game here and there but not like he did when he was in San Francisco.

It’s always good to develop and reinvent yourself especially for a reliever because most relievers have one or two pitches and I always refer to the greatest relief pitcher of all time which is former Yankee closer Mariano Rivera. Rivera retired last year and has more than one World Series ring.

Rivera has over 600 saves he cornered the fast ball and stayed with it for his career but that is a freak of nature, that doesn’t happen to relief pitchers forever, and they talk about the Giants Tim Lincecum being the Freak, how about Rivera, he’s a real freak. He was in baseball for 20 years and had one pitch and he was in over 600 games.

Besides Rivera most relievers try to be a closer and have at least two or three pitches, a change up, a slider, but Rivera was the exception. Wilson has the change up and now he’s adding a knuckle ball to his repertoire. He wants to prolong his career and he wants to help himself.

Former Giant pitcher Guillmerio Mota retired this week: Mota did well during his career, he had 14 years in the big leagues. That sounds like a very nice pension and good for him. That’s important, it’s tough to retire in baseball. With all respects to the NBA, the NFL, and the NHL, there are contracts in baseball this is a fact that guys have signed for $200 million.

The Seattle Mariners Robinson Cano signed for $240 million, no quarterback in football, no one in basketball or hockey has signed for that much yet. Baseball pays the largest salaries and that’s my point a lot of these guys get the big bucks. Former Yankee Jorge Posada the catcher in the glory days and former Yankee manager Joe Torre who got the team to the World Series asked Posada if he was going to retire and Posada said “I don’t know I have to talk to my agent”

Posada admitted to me “if I played another two years I could have made another $20 million” I would do the same if I could have two more years and make $20 million why not. My point is this is what happens to baseball players the money now is so large in baseball. Players are thinking they can stay another season and make another $10 million.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the Spanish radio voice for Oakland A’s baseball and does News and Commentary each week for Sportstalk radio

That’s Amaury News and Commentary

The government controlled system in Cuba has taken it’s toll on baseball in that, the largest island in the Caribbean. Cuba was the first Latin American country to have a player in the United States organized leagues.

Esteban Bellán was the first Cuban and the first Latin American to play major league baseball. Bellán, who after playing in the United States, became one of Cuba’s first great baseball player-managers, learned how to play the game while he was a student at Fordham University from 1863-1868.

During his time at Fordham, Bellán played for the newly created Fordham Rose Hill Baseball Club. Founded in the late 1850’s, the Fordham Rose Hill’s played the first ever nine-man team college baseball game in the United States against St. Francis Xavier College on November 3, 1859.

In 1869 Bellán joined the Troy Haymakers for whom he played third base until 1872. In 1871 the Haymakers joined the National Association, which became the National League in 1876. The Haymakers later became the New York Giants, now the San Francisco Giants.

Cuba has been a pioneer in baseball in Latin America, since the 1800’s. In Cuba even under bad government dictatorships, baseball always thrived, When the Castro-Communist revolution took over Cuba, and announced in 1961 that they were banning all professional sports in the island, baseball was among those, and now over a half century later, it is obvious that Cuba is suffering.

After the Cuban team was eliminated recently in the Caribbean World Series, in Margarita Island, Venezuela, (tournament was won by México, for the second year in a row), a lot of baseball experts have noticed that Cuban baseball is not at par with the other countries in the region.

A lot has to do with poor equipment, practice and regular baseball diamonds. In today’s regular Cuban league, when a foul ball goes into the stands, the fans have to throw the ball back. That by itself, should give you an idea of the situation. This is even during their national championship games.

Many players have defected and continue to do so, here in the Bay Area talented Athletics slugger Yoenis Céspedes was one of them. Maybe the most talented player, pound-for-pound on the A’s, he was lucky, he got to finally bring his family to the United States.

It is not easy for a Cuban player who defects, especially if he does it by himself, and leaves his family behind in Cuba, the government will make his family life “very uncomfortable”, in a country where their own citizens do not have the freedom to travel in and out of the island, unless they have special authorization from the government.

Musicians, athletes and public figures usually get that authorization. In the case of Cuban baseball players, they usually travel all-together as a team, with coaches and government representatives, that make sure they are all accounted for at the hotel where they stay, before and after a game, still many find a way to leave their teams when they are outside of Cuba and ask for political exile.

Others, just take the huge risk of escaping Cuba in homemade rafts and head north, searching for freedom. But it is not only athletes. Amnesty International, still list Cuba as one of the world biggest human rights violators.

On March 17, 2013,seven members of the Cuban National Ballet defected to the U.S. and Mexico while on tour with their dance company.

The dancers traveled to Mexico on March 17 during the beginning of the company’s international tour. It was there that they apparently decided to flee, and six out of the seven members went on to cross the U.S.-Mexico border near Texas, and since then they were granted for political asylum. Such is life in the island once called “The Pearl of the Antilles”.

Like Walter Cronkite used to say: “and that’s the way it is”.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the Spanish radio voice for Oakland A’s baseball and does News and Commentary each week for Sportstalk

That’s Amaury’s News and Commentary

It’s commendable is the word that some Major Leaguers including former San Francisco Giant Jeff Kent’s whose caliber and whose name has been mentioned for the Hall of Fame there are guys in baseball who make money but Kent is doing it for the love of the game. He’s coaching college baseball and he’s getting a nominal fee nothing like the mnoney he made in the show.

Yes, you can not compare Kent’s coaching baseball in college to being in the big leagues and contracts such as they are today. I applaude Kent and he’s committed to the game of baseball. He loves the game he’s an on and off guy with the media when he was with the Giants and I was there covering the team for their Spanish radio broadcasts when he was there.

If former Giant Barry Bonds sat in one area of the clubhouse Kent would sit farthest away from Bonds, they didn’t get along we all knew that but they were great players. Bonds with the streroid controversey, Kent never had that problem by the way Kent was a very good player, he was an excellent player. Kent started out as a third baseman with the Mets. He wound up playing second base for the Giants and now today he coaches college baseball at Southwestern University.

Brandon Arroyo was signed to a $23 million deal with the Arizona Diamondbacks, we talked about the amount of money that these players make in Major League Baseball and God bless them I don’t envy them, their great athletes but here’s a typical example, Arroyo is going to be 37 in two weeks he pitches over 200 innings a year and he got such a large contract.

This reminds me when you go to a car dealer and you love that car and you say “thats a nice car” and then you check with the salesman who says “well Mr.Gonzalez this has over 25,000 miles on it already” but it’s a good car, it’s going to go over 100,000 miles” and I would say “how do you know that.”

However with Arroyo he has a very good track record, he’s never been hurt for a prolonged time, he throws 200 innings per year, it’s a risk and you take a risk. It’s a big investment, the Diamondbacks again are loaded with talent and their going to be there. ESPN has picked the Dodgers to finish first and the Diamondbacks maybe close to the Dodgers and the Giants will finish in third place.

So Arroyo is joining the Diamondbacks pitching staff and their getting loaded with talent and Arroyo was a good acquistion. The money surprises me but then now that’s the way it is. Arroyo signed a huge deal for two years with the D-Backs for $23.5 million.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the Spanish radio voice for A’s baseball and does News and Commentary each week for Sportstalk radio