Message to Anonymous (Is that Greek?)

Thank you for responding to one of the posts of my blog. It is very brave of you to list your real name. Is that your first or last name? In China the first name is last and last is first. Or, it could be that you just go by a single name such as Madonna, Prince, Ichiro, ...etc.
I will gladly try and help you understand baseball, I thought I was pretty clear in my post of how the game is to be played.
In your reply to the post (in bold) you mentioned:

"Steve, although the hits to your catchers were hard and the second one may have been a little over the top, that is part of the game. although you may not teach it to your young athletes it is how the game is played at this level. and if your team was not ready to compete at this level of play you should not have competed."

Maybe this will help shine light on the Olympic situation. I made reference to this in my first post "A bad day at the office. We are not very good, the kids experience level of baseball is about High School Jr. Varsity level. They play only 30 games a year in a very poor baseball league. We did not win any qualifiers to be able to play in the Olympics. We would have lost if we did. We were allowed to compete in the Olympics for the simple fact that their country was hosting the Olympics. It is a courtesy that is extended to all of the hosting countries of the Olympics. For example, when they were in Athens, they didn't have to qualify and the next Olympics in London, they won't have to qualify either. Do you see how that works? That is why when I said in my "Oh...." post that they don't understand that part of the game , the dark side, it meant that they wouldn't know when, how, or why to hit someone in that instance. Aren't you curious why our catcher didn't get up and exact his revenge? It is because he didn't know how to act, the cheap shot was foreign to him. So, again you made mention to that is how the game is played, I remind you again to reread the post. If this was the real "game" Schierholtz would have had to fend off around 25 players and he would have to do this for about 2 years. If the umpires cannot handle the situation, the players will conduct their own court with their own rules to get their justice. That is not good baseball it is bad baseball at any level.

"your statements lead me to believe that you teach your players to watch where the ball is when tagging???? cuz thats what your telling me.... as a college athlete i have always been taught to not watch the ball while attempting to steal/tag up. By saying that Schierholtz was wrong to hit your catcher is wrong. your catcher was 1. blocking the plate and 2 the ball was not cut off but relayed. "

Huh? Bong resin kicking in? It would be easier to reply when the sentences reflect more concise content and intent. What are you doing again? Tagging up and watching the ball? I won't waste any more time trying to decipher your incoherent remarks on this one.
In reference to your 2 points:
1. Blocking the plate. Blocking the plate would mean that the catcher would be in between the runner and home plate thus blocking access to the plate. He would therefore have to straddle the third base line and move toward the foul side to stop the runner from sliding in "the back door" That means that he would slide away from the catcher, avoiding him, in hopes of catching a finger on the back side of the plate. Unfortunately that does not exist in this situation. In an article in the USA TODAY there is an Olympic picture gallery on the same page of their article on this game. It shows that our catcher's left foot was a foot inside
the foul line in fair territory. Exactly where it should be when he won't be involved in the play, conceding that the runner will score. Another picture on the NBC site has your favorite player, Schierholtz, leaving the path home to make a left turn toward our catcher and his body is diagonal to the horizon when he made contact. Maybe he was trying to slide on the inside of the plate instead of the back side of the plate away from a possible tag. Sure sound like he's avoiding a tag there. So if you were to go to another game look at the foul line. When they meet the plate you will see that there is about 90% of the plate exposed. Look a foot to the inside of the baseline and you will see that the runner has 100% of the plate. In fact even better, when you are playing baseball on your playstation, switch to an aerial view and you can see the line intersect the plate better. So don't tell me or anyone else on this blog that he was blocking the plate. You lose Mattlock.
Here are couple of questions for you:
1. If you were truly trying to retaliate who would you choose as your target?
a. Matt Laporta who is currently hitting .067 and struggling badly?
b. The perpatrator of the whole incident Nate Schierholtz. Nate was due up the next inning and there would be an opportunity to exact our revenge.
(Here's a hint b.) With the score still close in hand why would we put someone on base especially with an 0-2 count on a struggling hitter?

2. How many catchers that you know will block the plate without the ball? (Here's a hint...0.) Don't let your patriotism cloud your judgement. The ball was cutoff at the pitchers mound while your boy could moonwalk and sing Karaoke all the way home.

"you made yourself and your team look bad when Laporta was hit. his colision was perfectly legal as was shown when he was not ejected."

Apparently I went too fast as I mentioned exactly that in my post. Go to the "Oh what a night" post and this time read more slowly. I know that can be confusing if you try and speed read.

"However when your nobody of a pitcher decided to thrown at him ,at his head no less, that was wrong."

Only nobody I see is you. He's out there competing in the Olympics while your wiping the ketchup off of the side of your mouth spewing inane comments. I will state again, they don't know what retaliation is, we don't teach them any part of the "dark side" of baseball. They are not ready for that. It is a large enough challenge just to get them to throw a quality strike let alone teach them how to throw a ball on purpose.

"You failed to mention in either of your posts that this clear act of retaliation put Matt LaPorta (the key player in the trade that sent CC Sabathia to the Brewers) in the hospital with a concussion"

I wasn't aware at the time of the post that he was in the hospital or that he had a concussion. Apparently you must have insider information. Yes that was very tragic and I am very relieved that he is not injured. Matt is a great ball player and nobody wants to see him get hurt. He is a class act, bar none. After the game he heard that our catcher had to be escorted out of the game. He is actually undergoing surgery today to repair a torn ligament and his career will in all likelihood be over. Matt sent over a signed bat and batting gloves with a personal note to Wang Wei our catcher. Now that is baseball! It is truly irrelevant who the batter is, whether he is a superstar like Laporta or you, no one should ever get hit in the head.

"Also it did not appear that you were too disappointed with your pitcher as you appeared to congratulate him on your way to the clubhouse."

Disappointment wasn't even on my mind at the time. Disappointed? Boy you are high. When he came to the dugout all I wanted to do was find out what happened. I was calling pitches and I called for a curve ball. Why did he throw a fastball? the next thing on my agenda was damage control. This kid is clearly shaken up having to pitch in the Olympics. He is our best reliever and we need him to perform at the level he is capable of. I was trying to calm him down and keep him from turning into Steve Blass or more recently Rick Ankiel. He didn't understand why he had to leave the game. He kept saying he didn't try to hit him in his broken English. I tried to explain to him why he was taken out and it didn't make sense to him. AS a coach you can't always beat the kid with a rod. Not everybody kicks the dog for not bringing the stick back fast enough like you do. The kid was nervous, it was a very unnerving game. The USA delegates were nervous and so were the Chinese. It was a tense game. Let me see if I can help you relate.
It's like when you are playing in an Internet Playstation baseball tournament and it is a close game. You accidentally push the wrong button and you miss the ball. Or when it is your time to make a play and your thumb slips off of the joystick, causing you to err. Your mind wanted your body to do something but your body did something entirely different. Only in this case it was REAL. It's called nervousness and the moisture on your hand while on the joystick is sweat, a natural secretion of the body when there is unnatural stress involved.

the olympics are supposed to put nation vs nation. the chinese should have hired a national to coach their team and not two washed up nobodys from Arizona. "

Are you coherent? So you're telling me that our table tennis coach and our gymnastics coach and all other foreign coaches should quit the USA team and go back to their native land? Oh that's just beautiful, thank you for that one.
It sure is nice to be given recognition, thank you. It feels good to be washed up nobodies like Jim and I who collectively made 2 ALL STAR teams, won the rookie of the year, won the American League ERA title, managed 3 Major League teams and were on 6 World Series teams. It sure is good to be washed up nobodies. As they say, it is much better to be a "has been" than a "never was."