Cleveland Sports Forum

I am pretty sure the guy they quote has little scientific training ("I had a medical student research it"?).

This quote is blatantly incorrect "Oral steroids, the corticosteroids, are metabolized in a totally different way than injectable steroids. With injectable ones, your voice will deepen and there will be other effects."

He does not seem to know that anabolic steroids are related to testosterone, and that corticosteroids (stress, inflammation, energy mobilization etc) are from the adrenal gland and very different - although oral use of them can also result in a failed drug test. Asthmatics can use inhaled corticosteroids with a personal use exemption.

Good to see the Indians looking for only top of the rotation starters at the deadline. I'd package Santana, Kluber and TJ House for Lee and $30M. Oh bye the way went to see the Clippers recently and I will tell you this kid Chen will be in the Indians bullpen by the end of August. He's the real deal folks.....

And Blake Wood is right behind him....

Both looked very good but Blake is very slow to the plate so a base running issue there...

The kid Chen is actually the kid Lee (Chen Lee to be specific). I would be happy to see him and maybe Wood well before September.

J.R. wrote:My recollection is that we all loved Omar in '97. Those were the "glory years." Perhaps by '04, he may have lost some support, but I for one was sad to see him leave.

With a nod to the movie "Independence Day," that is not entirely accurate, sir

YOU may have appreciated Omar, J.R. but many if not a majority posting on these line of boards from ABJ days were ready to give up Omar for anything that "was shiny" for trade. "Light hitting" was oft noted with eyes upon the other MLB shortstops and their offensive stats of the day.

There were many more posters back then. Some were run out. Some were not able to deal with Rusty. Some jumped off the 90's bandwagon. And heck, some might now be in jail. If not, perhaps they should be.

Some have passed away.

Some just got bored.

Pretty frickin' sure no new posters joined this place in it's history since Mark Shapiro took the Indians reigns.

In 1997, Omar was the toast of the town and this forum.

As usual, TFISC is full of shit !

But he has a huge crush on me, loves Barry Manilow, and posting ugly, ugly, pictures and telling us they are attractive.

Guess those posters must have got tired of you too, chipmunk cheeks !

Are you still here ? What happened to "poof" you were gone ? Just bullshit as usual. Post another picture of a "slumpbuster".

rusty2 wrote:In 1997, Omar was the toast of the town and this forum.

As usual, TFISC is full of shit !

But he has a huge crush on me, loves Barry Manilow, and posting ugly, ugly, pictures and telling us they are attractive.

Guess those posters must have got tired of you too, chipmunk cheeks !

Are you still here ? What happened to "poof" you were gone ? Just bullshit as usual. Post another picture of a "slumpbuster".

Oops, I guess when I was being moderated you somehow came off my "blocked" list Rusty.

You sound like one really sane and secure guy there, Rusty.

(I always noted you took the moniker of the rarely seen TV son of Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore on Dick's show, and to the best of my knowledge no one on this board has ever personally met you or seen your picture)

And you are dead wrong on Omar Vizquel.

1997 was best known on a positive note for "the wheel play." Finesse baseball fans like Husker and JoeZ appreciated Omar in 1997, and they are among two still posting here you have not been successful in chasing off for your odd reasons for creating personal missions.

Lots of Cleveland fandom was packaging Omar Vizquel for possible deals in the 1997 post post season, as he was not appreciated as much as the easily appreciated stat guys of Cleveland Indians box scores.

I know you apparently love Mark Shapiro so much you could perhaps be Mrs. Shapiro and get pissed off at me for citing his ineptitude.

I get that, Mrs. Shapiro.

I cruise by to see what's going on. To me, Rusty, you are the rotten apple in the barrel.



Tribe Fan SC/Cali - I would like your email. Reply to flatwater2@msn.com

Husker, you continue to add nothing as usual. I think you are the only one that has threatened to leave more then TFISC. Sad.

Once again, TFISC you prove that you spend most of your time here lying. Knew you were reading but that was a great excuse.

This is becoming a rather unhappy place! Take it easy folks, it's just baseball.

LOL, if only that was all it was!

Indians shouldn't sell out for Garza
Ken Rosenthal


UPDATED JUL 11, 2013 9:04 PM ET

When the Indians acquired right-hander Ubaldo Jimenez at the 2011 non-waiver deadline, their farm system was the seventh-best in the majors, according to the preseason rankings in Baseball America. Jimenez, meanwhile, was no mere rental – he was under club control, at below-market salaries, through 2014.


The Indians, 3½ games behind the division-leading Tigers at the time, actually were further out of first place than they are now. But even though their current deficit is a mere 2½ games, it probably doesn’t make sense for them to make a big play for Cubs right-hander Matt Garza.

The team’s farm system ranked only 20th in the most recent Baseball America rankings. And Garza, unlike Jimenez two years ago, would be strictly a rental. The Indians could not even make him a qualifying offer to gain draft-pick compensation; potential free agents who are traded in the middle of a season are exempt from such offers.

Given all that – and the Tigers’ potential to run away with the AL Central - the Indians are unlikely to dip into their thin prospect pool to acquire Garza for 10 to 12 starts. Particularly when the difference between Garza and the pitcher he replaces probably would not be enough to push the Indians past the Tigers.


In fact, the Indians currently are more focused on adding a reliever than a starter, according to major-league sources. Their internal rotation options include right-hander Danny Salazar, who excelled in his major-league debut against the Blue Jays on Thursday, allowing one earned run in six innings.

Righty Zach McAllister, recovering from a sprained right middle finger, is expected to be activated shortly after the All-Star break. And righties Carlos Carrasco and Trevor Bauer currently are at Triple A.

As for the bullpen, part of its problem is that the starters have thrown the fourth-lowest number of innings in the AL, causing the relievers to be overworked. At various points this season, the Indians have gone with eight relievers and only three bench players.

Closer Chris Perez is 5-for-5 in save chances with a 1.13 ERA since returning from shoulder soreness on June 28. But right-hander Vinny Pestano, who spent time on the DL with right elbow tendinitis, has a 5.66 ERA since his return on May 17.

Full speed ahead to the All-Star break: Cleveland Indians chatter

Paul Hoynes, The Plain Dealer
on July 11, 2013 at 5:12 PM


CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Seen and heard at Progressive Field before Thursday's series finale.

Clubhouse confidential: No player or team should ease into the All-Star break. At least not in the mind of manager Terry Francona.

"The first half doesn't wind down," said Francona. "It comes to a crashing halt. You go 100 mph and then you take a break. You don't wind into it. That's what we need to do. That's what we will do. So you play 100 mph and then you take a break."

The Indians' final three-game series before the break begins Friday night against the Royals at Progressive Field.

Style points: First baseman Mark Reynolds wasn't just trying to score style points when he made a sliding catch of Jose Bautista's foul pop in front of Toronto's dugout to start the fourth inning.

"I didn't want to run into (catcher) Yan (Gomes)," said Reynolds. "Plus I was playing over in the hole and I was sprinting at full speed. It takes a little while to slow down when you're going that fast, I figured the best chance I had was to slide, and fortunately it went into my glove."

Stat of the day: Center fielder Michael Bourn is the hardest man in the American League to double up. Bourn has hit into one double play in 270 at-bats.

Fosse still aching, but not bitter 43 years after All-Star Game collision

OAKLAND -- Four decades later, Ray Fosse is standing in a dark tunnel underneath the Coliseum. He still cannot lift his left arm all the way up over his head.

It is hot, it is summertime and the All-Star Game is right around the corner. And he knows what this means.

More questions. More trips to 1970, and the 12th inning in Cincinnati's Riverfront Stadium. More head-on collisions.

More Pete Rose.

Who says there is no expanded instant replay in baseball?

Replays of the jarring Rose-Fosse crash have expanded for 43 years now. It remains one of the most-viewed plays in baseball history. And the outcome never changes.

Pain? Still.

"Like a knife sticking me in the shoulder," Fosse, now 66, said. "Because it's bone on bone. And arthritis, and age, and the whole thing."

Let's pause right here for a moment to make an important point. He is not bitter. He is in his 28th season with the Athletics as a radio and television analyst. He is approaching his 40th season overall in baseball. And he smiles a lot.

He has been married to Carol for 43 years, and they have daughters and grandsons and lots and lots and lots of smiles.

"I'm fortunate," he said. "Blessed."

Not bitter. No way.

But what Fosse would love to do is zero in on the truth of the matter from that sultry, 80-degree evening and clear up some of Rose's revisionist history.

Eventually, he figures, he will write something about that evening. If not a book, at least an article, or maybe something through social media.

"Not to disparage Pete, but a lot of truths have not come out since then," said Fosse, who was representing the Cleveland Indians in that All-Star Game. "Which is very upsetting."

The way Rose has told the story over the years in interviews and via syndicated radio shows is that he, Fosse and pitcher Sam McDowell had been out on the town the night before the All-Star Game and wound up back at Rose's house until 4 or 5 a.m.

The way Fosse says it went is that, yes, the three men did go to dinner the night before the game. But it was with their wives. Pete and Karolyn. Sam and Carol. Ray and Carol. And they were called it a night by 1 a.m. or so.

Ray and Carol had been married only three months earlier, in April. And the All-Star Game back then was a low-key affair. There was no Home Run Derby. No Futures Game. The players arrived on Sunday night, worked out on Monday afternoon and played the game Tuesday evening.

McDowell and Rose were longtime friends. Fosse was in his first full season in the majors.

"There was none of the fanfare they have now with all of the parties and things," Fosse said. "We just ended up going out to dinner the night before because there was nothing going on. And we talked baseball, and Pete said, 'All you want to talk about is Johnny Bench.'

"Well, of course. Because Johnny Bench was a National Leaguer. I knew he was a great player.

"And the bottom line was, we got back to the hotel, because it was a Tuesday night game, at 1 a.m. It wasn't like it was 4 a.m., which, at times, he has said. He's said, 'Oh, we were out until 4 or 5 in the morning. We were friends.'"

This is the part that still eats at Fosse, right around the edges of the pain from his once-broken shoulder, all of these years later. That Rose diminishes his hit on Fosse's career by passing off the play as something that happened among friends. Almost as if the whole thing were a simple little fraternity prank gone awry.

"He fails to remember, and maybe because I'm fortunate that my wife and me have been married 43 years since that summer, and they have not," Fosse said. "Pete and Sam both have not. And I don't know if he just forgets or does it intentionally, or whatever. But those are some of the truths."

At 23 that summer, Fosse was on the launching pad of what appeared to be a brilliant career. He had 16 homers and 45 RBI in 78 games at the break.

Following the break, with pain wracking his shoulder, he had two homers and 15 RBI in 42 games.

X-rays immediately after Rose bowled him over to score the winning run for the NL that evening were negative. There was no such thing as an MRI then. So Fosse simply rested and then played when the agony subsided to a simple throb in the shoulder.

It wasn't re-X-rayed until 1971, when it was still killing him, and he was shown to have a fracture and a separated shoulder. But it had healed in place.

In the wrong place.

"Once it healed, and healed improperly, you're not going to do much about it," Fosse says.

Rose never really reached out to Fosse afterward. The two have spoken, the former catcher says, only twice since.

It was early in the 1971 season when the Reds and Indians played an exhibition game that their paths first crossed after the play. With initial X-rays failing to show that his shoulder was fractured and separated, Fosse actually caught for the Indians on the Thursday the second half started in 1970, just two days after Rose smashed him. Rose had made the point that he had to miss three games with a bruised thigh.

Anyway, Rose was running while Fosse was in the outfield during batting practice before the Reds-Indians exhibition in early '71 when Rose called out to him.

"He said, 'Hey, you're off to a slow start,'" Fosse said. "Those were the only words I heard from him from the All-Star Game until I retired 10 years later. That was it. We never had interleague play. 'Hey, you're off to a slow start.'

"Sure I was. Because I had a fractured and separated shoulder, and the pain was there, and is still there 43 years later."

There was one other brief meeting between the two men, in the mid-1980s, when Buddy Bell was playing for the Reds. Fosse, retired and in the Bay Area, went over to San Francisco when the Reds were in town to visit with his old teammate and friend. Rose was the player-manager for Cincinnati.

"We spoke briefly," Fosse said. "The whole thing, he says I tried to block the plate, very simply. As a catcher, I positioned myself where the ball was being thrown by Amos Otis. I was up the line. Because if I'd stayed on home plate, I miss the ball by three feet and we wouldn't be talking today. Because they would have said, 'Geez, why did you olé it?'"

"It was different times then. I'm not saying that it's good or bad. I was taught as a catcher, catch the ball and try to plant the tag. And the thing that I look at, you watch the replay, which I've seen a million times, he starts to go into a head-first slide and he saw me and whether or not ... he's in Cincinnati, his home park. Charlie Hustle.

"I do a couple of flips, and he does come back to look and see, then Dick Dietz grabs him, a couple of guys grab him and he really doesn't come back. I'm on my knees and all of the AL players and Earl Weaver, the trainer came out and it was killing me and they X-rayed it after the game."

Fosse was traded to the A's before the 1973 season, then was re-acquired by Cleveland in 1976. The Mariners obtained him from Cleveland in 1977, he played a handful of games for the Brewers in 1979, and that was that.

He was a two-time All-Star, won two Gold Gloves, earned two World Series rings with the Athletics in '73 and '74 and, probably most important of all, got to play in his wife's native Oakland before family tragedy struck.

"To have played on a team that we knew, ultimately, we're not going to win, to a team that won a championship and then won two more," Fosse said of the Cleveland-Oakland deal. "To be a part of that, and my late father-in-law, my wife's father, ended up having a heart attack prior to the 1975 season ... it's like God saying, 'We're going to send you out to Oakland for three years, you're going to play there, your wife is going to get to enjoy her father, yourfather-in-law is going to be able to enjoy baseball -- he was a great fan -- and then he's going to pass away from a heart attack and I'm going to get traded back to Cleveland?'

"Come on. That's the way I looked at it. I had three wonderful years with my father-in-law. He was a great golfer, a great Italian farmer up in the valley, a great person, and then I get traded back to Cleveland."

His father-in-law attended Oakland's World Series games against the Mets and Dodgers. Then, life shifted again.

Today, the Fosses split time between their Oakland home (during the season) and their place in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Maybe he wouldn't have chosen this particular niche in baseball history, but he has embraced it. He spends his days looking forward, not backward.

"Bottom line, to be able to play 11 years of major-league baseball, to broadcast for 28, and to play another so many years in minor leagues ... that's 40 years of professional baseball," Fosse said. "It's been my life, and I wouldn't change it for the world.

"To work for a ballcub, to be able to say that you work for a team, I think that's special. I wouldn't change a thing."

Unwillingly, or, better yet, unwittingly, he certainly did change mid-July.

He still remembers talking with the late Gary Carter when the All-Star Game was in Oakland in 1987.

"In this tunnel we're standing in right now," Fosse said, he saw Carter.

"Have a great game," Fosse told him.

"What happened to you will not happen to me," Carter said back to Fosse.

"So he was thinking, 'All-Star Game, I'm not going to get in a collision,'" Fosse says. "That's something that's always stood out in my mind. But it was a little bit later, 1987, 17 years.

"A different time. But guys were thinking about it, seeing that collision over and over. And you watch all the highlights, and the No. 1 collision at home plate, it's going to show up. It's part of it."

Funny thing today is, enough years have passed that when Fosse works the clubhouses before a broadcast, he always introduces himself to players preparing for that night's game against the A's as, "I'm Ray Fosse, a broadcaster." It is not, "Hi, I'm Ray Fosse, a former player."

And do you know what he often gets?

"They say, 'Hey, you're the guy!'" Fosse said. "It comes up. Because these players today are so far removed from that time, it's not even in their mind who I am. And I don't go on talking about that.

"But once they see it, they go, 'You're the guy.'"

He has been, for 43 years. The hair and mustache are gray now, but the memory remains fresh. And at various times when he moves his arm the wrong way or if it's simply a bad day or night, so, too, does the pain.

Still, the man loves coming to the park each day. The enthusiasm is evident in his broadcasts.

It's also evident in his quick and easy smile.

"It's been good," Fosse said of his four decades-plus in baseball. "I wouldn't change it for the world."

Seems to me that is a man who gets it.

It's not what happens to you in life, it's what you make of it. His life is all the richer. Even ask him.

More cool Indians stuff....somebody stop me!!!

Buster Olney


Cardinals, Indians lead latest trade buzz
July, 12, 2013
JUL 12
8:17
AM ET
By Buster Olney | ESPN.com
RECOMMEND3TWEET10COMMENTS0EMAILPRINT
Cabrera
Andrew Weber/US Presswire
Asdrubal Cabrera's bat and glove could play well in the St. Louis lineup.

After Rafael Furcal’s elbow fell apart in spring training and trade speculation began, St. Louis Cardinals players spoke highly of Pete Kozma. They could not have had the kind of run they did at the end of last season, the other Cardinals said, without Kozma playing solid defense in the last weeks of the season. Earlier this season, Kozma was hitting a high as .276, on May 28.

But Kozma hit .209 in June, with a .501 OPS, and he was recently given a three-day break. He’s hitting .232 with a .572 OPS overall.

Sources say there has been more discussion about a possible swap that was talked about in the offseason: the Indians’ Asdrubal Cabrera to St. Louis.

It’s unclear just how far advanced these talks are, whether it’s more conceptual or internal at the moment, and undoubtedly, it’s a deal that would be more easily done in the offseason, with more time.

But it’s a situation worth watching, because it could be an in-season match that could make sense for both teams. For St. Louis, Cabrera would represent an upgrade at shortstop: He’s 27 years old and a switch-hitting, two-time All-Star with power and experience. Cabrera has a .725 OPS and has demonstrated the ability to play multiple positions, which is why the Yankees have asked about him repeatedly. He could play shortstop, yes, but also third base or second or even first, so if the Yankees needed to fill in for Derek Jeter or Alex Rodriguez or Robinson Cano -- depending on developments ranging from injury (Jeter and A-Rod) to PED suspension (A-Rod) to free-agent departure (Cano, perhaps), Cabrera could step in. Cabrera makes $6.5 million this year, and will earn $10 million next season, before becoming eligible for free agency.

The Indians are positioned to consider trading him, because if Cabrera were swapped, they could cover his departure in the short term with Mike Aviles -- and, of course, star prospect Francisco Lindor is climbing through the minors as the long-term solution; he’s hitting .307 in high-A ball this year, at just 19 years old.

The Indians presumably would require at least one really good prospect in return, somebody close to the big leagues, and the Yankees don’t necessarily have a lot to choose from at the top of their system. But the Cardinals do, particularly with their pitching; they have what is regarded as the best farm system in the game, and they are loaded with great young arms -- Shelby Miller and Trevor Rosenthal already have graduated to the big league level and presumably are not available, and Carlos Martinez and Michael Wacha are top arms in the minors, among others. (Martinez, by the way, was just called up to work out of the St. Louis bullpen, as Derrick Goold writes.)

If the Cardinals traded for Cabrera, an already deep lineup would get even better: St. Louis ranks first in the National League in runs scored, in spite of relatively weak production at shortstop. They’re hitting .338 with runners in scoring position as a team, which helps.

If the Indians get a top-shelf young pitching prospect for Cabrera, he would join an already growing stable of starting pitching options for Cleveland that includes Danny Salazar, who wowed in his major league debut Thursday; over six innings, he showed a 95-plus mph fastball and a wicked changeup.

The Indians have Justin Masterson, Ubaldo Jimenez, Corey Kluber and Scott Kazmir now, and will be getting the underrated Zach McAllister back soon. From the beginning of the year, Cleveland has continued to believe that Trevor Bauer will evolve, through his struggles. We'll see if they're ready to make that collection even deeper.