IT’S A MADD
MADD WORLD...
What in the world has happened in Texas where the Rangers, who were in first place in the AL West from Opening Day until Aug. 2 6 , are in a catastrophic free fall? Suddenly, everything that could go wrong for the Rangers has, and Hall of Famebound manager Bruce Bochy may be wishing he’d stayed retired. Things started to go south for the Rangers on July 1 8 when their ace Nathan Eovaldi went down with a forearm injury that sidelined him for seven weeks. Since then, the Rangers’ pitching has been universally awful. Max Scherzer, who came over from the Mets for their top prospect Luisangel Acuna, has been of little help and was bombed for three homers and four runs in 1 ⅓ innings in his most important start of the year last week against the Astros, who hammered Texas pitchers for 1 6 homers in a three-game sweep. There is no one in the bullpen (ranked 2 5 th in baseball with a
4 .8 6 ERA), Bochy can count on. On Aug. 6 , third baseman Josh Jung, the front-runner for AL Rookie of the Year, was hit by a pitch that broke his thumb and has not yet returned, and now the Rangers’ best player, Adolis Garcia, the AL RBI leader, is sidelined indefinitely with a patella strain in his knee. Incredibly, the Rangers, who for 4 ⅓ months looked like one of the best teams in baseball, are now probably not going to make the playoffs. … For 2 8 years Jeffrey Loria was one of the most controversial owners in all of baseball, leaving hundreds
of thousands of alienated fans and city officials in his wake after his departures from Montreal and Miami, but now he’s taken the opportunity to tell his side of the story in his recently published memoir “From the Front Row — Reflections of a Major League Baseball Owner and Modern Art “(Post Hill Press). Baseball fans and historians can skip the first half of the book, which is all about Loria’s career as one of the country’s preeminent modern art dealers. The second half, however, details Loria’s often tempestuous 28-year run as the last owner of the Expos (before they were sold to Major League Baseball) and then the Marlins that included a world championship over the Yankees in 2003. Some highlights: His frustration with his penurious Canadian partners and the great satisfaction he felt when they lost the RICO suit they’d filed against him on every single count; his heartbreak when Marlins ace Jose Fernandez was killed in a boating accident in 2016 and how he almost sold the team because of it; his later regret at having fired Joe Girardi as Marlins manager in 2006 (the year he was NL Manager of the Year) over what he now says was an unfortunate misunderstanding. In his chapter on broadcasters, Loria, a native New Yorker who grew up with Mel Allen, has high praise for Michael Kay, John Sterling, Suzyn Waldman, David Cone and Paul
O’Neill. It’s a terrific read and he even wrote it himself — without the help of any of the baseball scribes who routinely skewered him.