Mormon Baseball

Archive for the ‘Profile’ Category

Bryce Harper (known as Bam Bam) is perhaps the last person you would expect to be a baseball historian. But Harper started Spring Training drawing a historical analogy to his injury running into a wall last year. He was, it seems, just like Babe Ruth.

On July 5, 1924, Harper recounted, Babe Ruth ran into the wall in Washington DC’s Griffith Stadium, knocking himself out cold for 5 minutes. Despite that, the Bambino refused to leave the game and went 3 for 3. That is the kind of all-out play that Harper is known for, so maybe there is something to the analogy.

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The nerd-look is benefiting LDS ballplayer Eric Sogard, who has reached the final four in MLB’s “Face of MLB” popularity contest. Sogard faces the Blue Jays’ José Bautista in the twitter-based vote today, starting at 9am EST.

The Face of MLB contest is basically an MLB promotional campaign to engage fans for the upcoming season. Each team nominates a player who then faces a player from another team in a day-long twitter vote. The winner advances to the next round in an elimination contest that will end this week.

Today Sogard faces the Blue Jay’s José Bautista, who has been actively seeking voters by agreeing to follow their twitter accounts (he already is following over 170,000 fans). Fans can vote up to 25 times by twitter for the player they like. To vote for Sogard simply send a tweet with the hash tags #EricSogard and #FaceOfMLB.

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The culture and news podcast The Cultural Hall posted its interview with John Buck yesterday. The interview includes a number of gems, as Buck tells the story of his arrival in the majors and his career. However, since the interview was recorded in January, it doesn’t cover his most recent experience with the Mets.

The audio file is about 1 hour long, and the interview with Buck starts about 10 minutes into the podcast. In addition to finding it on The Cultural Hall, you can also find the podcast on iTunes.

Here are some of the lines I enjoyed the most from Buck’s interview:

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You may have missed this news from the regular season, and I’ve been wanting to write about it ever since I saw it. In the field, Darwin Barney, in just his second season in the majors, has been nearly perfect. During the entire season he committed just two errors, and that while playing 2nd base, one of the most error prone positions in baseball.

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With the start of the reality television season comes news that former San Francisco Giants player and LDS Church member Jeff Kent is one of the contestants on this year’s “Survivor.” Kent was awarded the National League MVP in 2000 and was an All Star five times during his 17 year career, which ended in 2008. Since his retirement, he has lived on his ranch in Texas with his wife and four daughters.

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While injuries prevented the Mormons on last year’s All Star teams, Roy Halladay and Jacoby Ellsbury, from making this year’s team, almost as if it were destiny a last-minute injury led to the selection last Friday of National League rookie Bryce Harper as an All Star. Since Mormons don’t believe in predestination, but in ‘fore-ordination,’ which requires effort and merit and allows for agency, Harper must deserve the spot, right?

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