Hideo Nomo Has a Posse

“If I was a musician, I’d be Kanye West. If I was in the NBA, I’d be Ron Artest,” the 31-year-old former Expo, Indian, Dodger, Athletic, Padre, Ranger and Cub said this week. “In baseball, they’ve got Milton Bradley. I’m that guy. You need people like me, so you can point your finger and go, ‘There goes the bad guy.”

From his latest little interview w/ the media.

I do like the clever little diss of the umpire who tossed him from the second Spring Training affair. Asked if Milton had ever had an incident w/ the guy before:

“I mean, I haven’t been in Triple A, so how could I have an incident?” he said with a grin.

Keep the gold rain coming, Milton!

Wow, not sure what happened here, but Mr. Milton Bradley was just tossed from a Spring Training affair against the Texas Rangers. He struck out on a called strike three, and perhaps thinking he was the third out – hey, it’s happened before – he laid his bat down and took off his helmet. He then walked from the playing field towards the Seattle dugout. Immediately after, Mariner manager Don Wakamatsu ran out to the plate and engaged in a pretty heated conversation with the home plate umpire.

I mean, Walamatsu heated. The guy keeps it cool. You could tell, though, that this was a little much.

The announcers were unable to figure it out- Niehaus mentioned the scenario where Mr. Bradley might have thought he was the third out – and the replay did not seem to indicate that he said anything to the umpire.

CLEARLY what we have here is the opening 2010 salvo in the ongoing battle between the umpires and Mr. Bradley. It’s obvious to ANYONE who watches baseball that the umpires are CONSPIRING against Mr. Bradley, so this is really nothing new.

Interesting. I’ll be scouring the webs tomorrow to see if there’s any story around what happened, but for now we should assume that this another chapter in the ongoing effort to keep Milton Bradley down.

UPDATE!

The fine folks at SB Nation have provided us with an animated GIF of the ridiculous ejection:

Really, whenever I see the back of this jersey, I can’t stop laughing.

From the News Tribune, it looks like Ichiro and Chone Figgins are getting along quite well:

Ichiro and Figgins have become close in the past few weeks, and when someone asked Figgins if he was going to Tucson for the Sunday-Monday Mariners trip, he turned and asked Ichiro.

“Are we going to Tucson?” Figgins asked.

“Hell no!” shouted Ichiro.

“There’s your answer,” Figgins said, and both men laughed.

I hope whenever Ichiro hangs up the spikes- and really, I hope that never happens- he puts his mind to writing a book. Surely the tao of Ichiro is something that he could impart to the world and we’d all be better off for it.

My lord man: Ben Sheets vomited all over the field today, unable to retire even one batter: 10 men faced, 8 hits, no strikeouts, one walk, nine earned runs. This runs his total line for spring to 4 IP 17 H 18 R and only one K. That’s not ten million dollars of service. The news reports claim that the numbers are not getting to the man and keep dropping the word “healthy”, but if your peripherals are so terrible- yes, even in spring- and especially coming off a year away from the game and the surgically repaired elbow, it does make the skeptic furrow the brow. I’m not sure how else you might judge the health of a recently renovated pitcher other than peripherals and velocity, and it seems like neither is really there for Sheets.

It’s clear that Beane dropped the $10 million on Sheets as a grand experiment. I don’t think many baseball fans would say that the Athletics intend to keep the man around for long if he performs but at this rate it doesn’t seem promising that they will be able to flip him for much.

We’ll see how it goes. From 2002 through 2004, Sheets averaged 225 innings and struck out 7.9 batters per nine. In his last year of ball before surgery he put up 198 innings. If anyone’s got the physical makeup to come back from the injury, it’s him.