Table of Content
- The Yankees star's AL record-setting homer becomes the second most expensive baseball ever sold at auction
- Blizzard, storm warnings issued for Rochester region. What to expect over holiday weekend
- Nos. 2 and 3 — A Big Big Night
- The Future of Steroids in MLB
- Mark McGwire Mashes No. 62, 1998
- GIANTS COUNTRY NEWSLETTER
The most difficult part about preparing for this game against the Vikings is figuring out which team will show up. The Vikings may have one of the best records in football, but they’ve shown up as a different version of themselves week in and week out. Blizzard warning issued for Niagara, Orleans, Erie, and Genesee counties in effect from Friday morning to Sunday morning. Winds gusting as high as 70 mph Friday and Friday night. Blizzard conditions will develop Friday afternoon lasting into Saturday night.
Aaron Judge became the first major league player to hit 50 home runs in a season since Pete Alonso of the Mets in 2019. With one more monstrous blast — this one on the road Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas — Judge stands alone, having passed Roger Maris for the A.L.’s single-season record. Pitchers had avoided throwing him strikes for days, but Tinoco made a mistake and Judge took advantage. Luckily, it was the start of a six-game homestand for the Yankees. So, those who did leave had the option of returning to Yankee Stadium over the following day in hopes of witnessing No. 61 or even No. 62 hit on Bronx soil. Stanton’s homer was a rarity in itself, becoming just the 32nd recorded walk-off grand slam while a team trailed by three runs since 1925, per MLB.com.
The Yankees star's AL record-setting homer becomes the second most expensive baseball ever sold at auction
Manny Ramirez's third bust wasn't for steroids, but actually for a female fertility drug. It is given to men who seek to restart testosterone production in their system after finishing a steroid cycle. Baseball has an amphetamine problem, and even a Ritalin problem as well. Miguel Odalis Tejada won an MVP award in 2002 simply because nobody wanted to see Alex Rodriguez win three in a row. It helped that the Athletics were great that year and the Rangers were not.
I had even gone to a game where the last names of both the starting pitcher and catcher started with a lowercase "d" -- that was Jacob deGrom and Travis d'Arnaud. Phillies closer Mitch Williams needed two more outs to force a Game 7. Gibson hurt his legs during the NLCS and could barely walk to the plate when Dodgers manager called upon him as a pinch-hitter to face Oakland closer Dennis Eckersley in Game 1 of the World Series. Obviously, Aaron is no longer baseball’s all-time home run king. But the night he broke the record with home run No. 715 was a seminal moment for the sport and the country. The Yanks trailed Boston by 10 games in the middle of July, only to come on strong late in the season and force a 163rd regular-season game.
Blizzard, storm warnings issued for Rochester region. What to expect over holiday weekend
If there is a lesson in all of this, it is that Bonds was perhaps smarter than all of these other guys. He started taking steroids much later in his career, and his body suffered less for it. If there is anything more offensive than Barry Bonds refusing to admit to using steroids in the face of the mountains of evidence, it's Sammy Sosa using corked bats in addition to steroids. The incident was caught on television and took cheating to a whole new level. Slammin' Sammy certainly wasn't the only player to cheat, but his case is the most insulting when he claimed it was all just an honest mistake. He said he mistakenly grabbed that corked bat, a bat he supposedly used only in batting practice.
Prior to signing his contract extension, Judge had told reporters in November that he did not plan to bid on the ball at auction. Barry Bonds holds the Major League Baseball home run record with 762. The only other players to have hit 700 or more are Babe Ruth with 714 and Albert Pujols with 703.
Nos. 2 and 3 — A Big Big Night
Judge’s home run was one of three that Shohei Ohtani allowed on June 2. Joe Maddon, the Angels’ manager at the time, thought Ohtani may have been tipping his pitches. Shane McClanahan of the Tampa Bay Rays had reason for some confusion after Judge’s 364-foot shot managed to clear the fence on June 15. Judge and Anthony Rizzo hit back-to-back homers in the top of the first inning, but the Mets answered with four runs in the bottom of the first and cruised to a 6-3 victory.
To date, it's the only time that Game 7 of the World Series has ended on a home run, which undoubtedly makes it the most memorable home run in baseball history. On an August night in San Francisco, Bonds went yard for his 756th career homer. He did it against Mike Bacsik, whose father once faced Aaron while he was still on 755 career home runs. While he technically became the single-season home run king in 2001, the blast Bonds hit to surpass Hank Aaron as the all-time home run leader is far more memorable. This home run is the reason why Jeter earned the nickname of Mr. November.
He's also the youngest person to ever get to 600 home runs in a career. He saw a major drop in performance during his last few seasons, a possible indication that steroids had finally taken their toll on him. He achieved that total in fewer at bats than anyone else. He retired after the 2001 season due to problems with his vision. This was likely due to the use of anabolic steroids, something he'd finally admit to using in 2010.
He said that Clemens took steroids, then he changed his mind on it. Major League Baseball, of course, is a huge business, and all the home runs and chasing after home run records was good for business right up until the time when it wasn't any more. What is kind of sad is that at the time, the steroid use wasn't really even against any rules. You could get into trouble for having been found to use cocaine, but not steroids.
While the ball ended up selling for a lucrative price, the ball's selling price fell short of the $3.05 million record set by Mark McGwire's 70th home run ball in 1998. The weakest part of this defense in the passing game is the short and intermediate middle of the field. Against the Vikings, quarterbacks have done the smart thing to take easy completions over the middle of the field between 0-20 yards and allow their receivers to make plays after the catch.
Judge did slow down a little in August, and a nine-game homerless streak through Aug. 21 dropped his projected total to 58.5 (with a straight-up pace of 61.1). He then responded with another barrage of power in September to make history and join Ruth and Maris in the American League's 60-homer club. Judge’s eighth-inning home run briefly tied the game, but Chicago scored two runs in the ninth to win. Judge’s home run off Kendall Graveman of the Chicago White Sox tied the game in the eighth inning on May 22.
The first pitch he threw to Judge in the fifth inning — a 78-mile-per-hour slider — was promptly deposited in center field for a three-run homer. That the home run put the struggling Yankees ahead in the game was icing on the cake. Judge did not homer on Tuesday, breaking a three-day streak, but that was only because the Yankees’ game against Minnesota was postponed because of rain. In the first game of Wednesday’s doubleheader he picked up right where he had been, homering in the fourth inning on a 85-mile-per-hour changeup that he sent into the stands in left field.
After starting the year by consistently generating five or more pressures in most games, Smith has only been able to do that in one of his last three games. With such strong wind gusts predicted, power outages are a serious concern, Hamilton said. Given that a holiday weekend is approaching and severe, snowy weather is expected throughout the northern US, any potential power outages would be "really bad news," Hamilton said. This Christmas weekend is expected to bring whipping winds, bitter cold temperatures and heavy lake effect snow to parts of western New York, including the Rochester region.
Jose Canseco was featured with his brother Ozzy in a Sports Illustrated article. The piece did not talk about how they were great baseball players, but rather how far they could sometimes hit a baseball. The bar was raised, and now everyone wanted to hit further and more frequently. In that same year as well, there was another guy who played his first full season. Barry Bonds was spectacular for many seasons before he ever used steroids. Were it not for the money and limelight players like Canseco, Sosa, and McGwire got, he'd probably have never used them at all.
How much, if anything, they're able to do in practice Tuesday will go a long way toward revealing some clues. Daboll predictably didn't have any updates regarding the statuses of safety Xavier McKinney (hand/NFI) or cornerback Adoree Jackson other than to say both were making progress. But the team will practice Tuesday, and because their game is on Saturday, they will be required to issue an injury report for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday before heading to Minnesota on Friday. The left-handed power-hitter didn’t need a second invitation, carving out a domineering 43 from 21.
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