July is here!!!!!!! Time for fireworks and July 4th baseball!!!! Here's what's going on in the Longball League.
Roster Moves
The Tax Dodgers used a roster move to drop Justin Verlander-DET and pick up Yu Darvish-TEX.
Who's Hot/Who's Not This Week
Hitters
Hot: Chris Davis. Do I need to say more?
Not: Philadelphia's Ryan Howard went hitless in 18 At-Bats with 11 strikeouts this week.
Pitchers
Hot: Aaron Crow of Kansas City won two games this week with an ERA of 0.00 in 13 innings pitched.
Not: Astros hurler Lucas Harrell went 0-2 this week allowing eight earned runs and walking six in 10 1/3 innings pitched.
This Week's Three Trivial Things
1. Moving for a discount. When MLB realigned for the 2013 season, somebody had to jump to the AL so that there would be 15 teams each in the AL and NL. The Houston Astros jumped at the chance.. Why? When the Astros went up for sale, MLB gave prospective new owner Jim Crane a 70 million dollar discount. He agreed, bought the team for less and now the Astros are in the AL West.
2. Talk about a long days journey into night; Thw White Sox lost both games of a twi-night double header to the Indians on Thursday that lasted over eight hours. The Sox lost the first game, 19-10 and lasted 4:02. The second game went 3:51 with a :25 rain delay which the Sox lost 9-8.
3. Michael Cuddyer has a 27-game hitting streak going. That's not really trivial and he's almost half way to Joltin' Joe. I better watch some Rockies games this week.
Cool Baseball Cards of the Week: 1971 Topps #554 Lowell Palmer, and 1979 Topps #516 Champ Summers.
This week, I salute the common card. The common card in the collecting world is a card of a player not regarded as a star player. Common cards are the backbone of all big sets. The one thing to remember about the common card is that each card is of someone who made it to the big leagues. Here's a look at a couple of cool common cards.
Lowell Palmer amassed a forgettable 5-18 record in parts of five seasons in the bigs. However, this card with him sporting those cool shades will live on forever.
If I was going to create a fictional baseball player, Champ Summers would be an awesome name. His real name is John Junior Summers, but hey, when you see the name Champ Summers, that just screams baseball player. Champ played in parts of 11 seasons for six different teams with 54 HRs and 218 RBIs.
Until next week folks remember there is only two months left of the Longball League regular season.
-The Commissioner
