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That's Amaury's News and Commentary: Good mix in A's camp makes for competitive team March 2, 2010 |
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PHOENIX--The A's have an interesting mix in camp this year the A's have pitcher Brett Tomko back, Ben Sheets is going to be the opening day pitcher on April 5h in Oakland against the Mariners. Sheets is in good health. Pitcher Justin Duchscherer is still not 100%, then you have a bunch of kids like Brett Anderson who is the real thing and is a real good lefty with Trevor Cahill and Gio Gonzalez, Dallas Braden. The Oakland A's have one of the best bullpens in baseball, Michael Wuertz had a terrific season and of course Andrew Bailey was the rookie of the year last season. The A's had more hitting this year and with Rickey Henderson whose helping coach the outfielders he's here in spring training. Rickey has been teaching Rajai Davis the techniques of stealing bases and nobody stole more than Rickey with 1406 stolen career bases. Things are looking up for the A's it's early spring. Tuesday was photo day they were taking pictures of the team. The Giants are looking good, Tim Lincecum has a two year deal with the team, so there is hope in the Bay Area for baseball. Sandy Koufax in Dodger camp: Sandy is a very quiet person and you rarely hear of him, a great, great pitcher, one of the best in team history if not the best. He had some much great stuff he only lasted seven or eight years. He had tremendous torque, his curve ball was the best I've ever seen. He was there in camp with the Dodgers who by the way since last season and the Dodgers train now in Glendale Arizona. Koufax is one of those guys that pitchers and everybody loves to listen to. Koufax is a very mild mannered, very soft spoken, but very intelligent and when he speaks you listen to him like that old stock broker E.F. Hutton. So when Sandy speaks you listen to him. It's good to see these guys come out like Willie Mays whose always with the Giants, Orlando Cepeda, this year Rickey Henderson, this is the big thing about spring training you can see these walking legends teaching these kids the techniques of the game. This is one of the most difficult games to master, Ted Williams had it right when he said, "the toughest thing is to hit a baseball coming 90 MPH consistently." It's just beautiful to see guys like Koufax and those are the type of players who are really inspiring for the young players. Santa Clara 49ers stadium vote remains tight poll says: A poll which reflects a 45-45 dead heat taken when Santa Clara residents were asked how they would vote on a new 49ers Stadium at Great America Park. I saw a poll on Tuesday that said the Mercury News reported that Santa Jose residents favored the Oakland A's moving to San Jose by a huge margin by 65%. The ball park for the 49ers is still up in the air. With a 45-45 tie in the polls basically it's half and half in Santa Clara and nobody knows if this is going to happen. As we also know they also talked about the 49ers and Raiders both sharing the Coliseum if the Santa Clara stadium measure does not pass. For football that works fine because you only play eight regular season games at home and very seldom the Raiders and Niners are at home at the same time. How many times do the Raiders and Niners play at the same time at home? The record must be minimum, so there is a lot of stuff happening regarding a stadium and a ball park in the Bay Area and we know that when you talk about building a stadium and even if the economy was good, it was still a tough proposition. So imagine now? Who has $400-$500 million to spend on a new stadium? It's not easy, I'm just riding the wave to see what happens with the stadium for the A's, 49ers and the Raiders. The Raiders have bigger headaches than the stadium. Al Davis wished his only problem was the Coliseum he needs an organization to run that team. With that said, it's always going to be a problem for getting a stadium. With the Giants it took them four ballots and finally they built the stadium with mostly private money which is now AT&T Park. Don't forget the Giants pay $20 million a year for AT&T Park so this was mostly privately financed but they still hold money and they have to pay to play there. This is a very complicated issue and it's more complicated nowadays because the economy is so bad. They expect this Friday that unemployment is going to go up 5% higher up to 12.5%.In California that is very high as we know. Also in Fremont in less than a month on April 1st General Motors Toyota plant is going to close it's doors. I have a neighbor who works there and he's going to be laid off, he's a young person in his 40s at retirement age. 4800 people are going to lose their jobs in Fremont in April. I have no idea what’s going to happen as far as the parks are concerned. It's going to be very tough unless it's private money to subsidize these stadiums. There is nobody who has any money left. Most cities are mostly bankrupt and the tax payers don't want to pay any more taxes. Amaury Pi Gonzalez does News and Commentary each week for Sportstalk Radio and is the Spanish voice for A's baseball |
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