Matt Smith's Chicago Cubs fan blog

I know, I know, Junior actually hit No. 600 yesterday, but by my calculations, if Ken Griffey Jr. would have been able to avoid the injury bug as soon as he arrived in Cincy that would be the headline across many sports pages in the morning’s paper.

How did I come up with 741 as my predicted home run total? I’m glad you asked.

It’s simple really. I pulled up Griff’s career stats on one of my favorite Web sites (baseball-reference.com), went through and for all the years he didn’t hit 40 homers from 1995-2006 I added the appropriate number to give him 40. That works out to be 23 in 1995 (which was the year The Kid broke his wrist on that amazing catch against the wall in the Kingdome), 18 in 2001, 32 in 2002, 27 in ’03, 20 in 04, five in ’05 and 13 in ’06.

Continue reading "Griffey Jr. blasts No. 741 in first inning"

In a season where it seems like Mariners fans are going to have to try to focus on the small accomplishments to keep from pulling their collective hair out, Ichiro gave the Mariner faithful something to talk about (along with giving the Red Sox Nation faithful something to hiss about) in last night's 5-3 loss to the BoSox.
With J.D. Drew at first in the top of the fifth, Jason Varitek smashed a Felix Hernandez offering to dead center for a sure double. But Ichiro got on his horse, leaped and made an amazing over the shoulder catch and crashed into the wall so hard it busted open the part of the fence that opens up and leads under the centerfield bleachers. He then had the wherewithal to get the ball back in to keep Drew at first, before he collapsed back to the ground.
Now I’ve seen all the Jim Edmonds, Ken Griffey Jr. and Andruw Jones highlights and I’m here to tell ya that Ichiro’s catch was just as amazing as any of those ever were. Other catches may have been more important (i.e. Willie Mays’ catch of Vic Wertz’s drive in the 1954 World Series), but just think how much more hoopla would be surrounding that catch this morning had the Ms been able to win last night. People would be calling it the momentum shift that turned the game around. Instead it’s just another wasted great play by one of the best centerfielders in the game.

Continue reading "Yeah, the Ms lost another one, but did you see Ichiro’s catch?!"

Sean Burroughs, the son of former MVP Jeff Burroughs, seemed to be destined for Major League greatness. After all, how many current Major Leaguers grew up in Major League locker rooms (Griffey Jr., Tony Gwynn Jr., Barry Bonds, Prince Fielder).

It would seem the few kids who are able to call some of the greatest players who have ever lived “uncle” or “godfather,” such is Bonds’ case, would have a huge advantage over the rest of us who aspired for greatness on the baseball diamond growing up. And let’s face it, they did (not to mention the fact they had the genes for baseball, too).

Sean Burroughs had all of these things working for him (he also won two Little League World Series), and when he was drafted as the No. 9 overall pick in the First Year Player draft in 1998 many thought it was simply a matter of time before he broke into the bigs and made an impact.

Continue reading "Is Jeff Clement the Ms version of the Padres’ Sean Burroughs?"