Commissioner is talking on the Indians broadcast of the Yankees-Indians game. I'm too distracted to write down some of the things he is saying, but he kind of reminds me of an official from the People's Republic of China. You pretty much know what he is going to say in advance and you wonder if he actually believes what he is saying himself. "The Steroid Era is definitely over." LOL!

Update: I can't believe I'm switching over to the YES broadcast, but the game caller for Cleveland is even more annoying than Selig. Interestingly, the YES broadcast on MLB.TV is a few minutes behind.

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Yankee Johnny Damon had the first hit in New Yankees Stadium, but the first run is scored by Indian Ben Francisco, right after Cody Ransom makes the fans forget about A-Rod for a second by cutting down Peralta at the plate after he made a good stop at third. Now the Yankees will have to come back against Cliff Lee if they want to inaugurate their new ballpark with a win.

Update: Jorge Posada hits the first home run in New Yankee Stadium and will now forever be mentioned together with Babe Ruth, who hit the first homer in the old stadium. The game is tied at 1-1 after five innings.

Update: The Indians score nine runs of the Yankees relievers, highlighted by the grand slam of the bat of Grady Sizemore, just after the men in the booth talked about how he has struggled against the Yankees in his career. So I guess we can write down Cliff Lee's name as the answer to the trivia question "Who won the first game in New Yankees Stadium?".

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Orel from Sons of Steve Garvey has written down a transcript of Vin Scully telling a story about how he ice-skated with Jackie Robinson:

I actually raced Jackie Robinson on ice skates—I think I tell that once a year—but it is a little offbeat.

One and one the count to Fred Lewis....Fouled back.

We were assigned by the Dodgers to go up to the Catskill Mountains and have a little symposium, whatever, for the customers up there, and it was dead of winter, and I brought my ice skates.

And Jackie, along with Rachel—who was great with child—we met up in the mountains.

Two and two.

And Jackie looked at my ice skates and said, "I'll go skating with you." Okay. And Rachel said, "I'm going too." Well, I was scared to death for her.

So we went to the rink. I put on my skates. They were great racing skates with the long blade.

And strike three call, strikeout number seven.

Well anyway, we were putting on our skates. And if you've never been on ice skates, when you put them on and you stand up, all of a sudden you're on your ankles because you have no idea how to balance on the blades.

And here's Jackie standing on his ankles and he turned and said to me, "I'll bet you five bucks I can beat you."

And I said, "Jack, you're from Southern California. I mean, I didn't know you ice skated."

He said, "I've never been on skates in my life," and I said, "Well, that's pretty obvious."

But I said, "Why would you want to race me? I'm not a great skater but I know I can beat you."

"Oh," he said. "That's okay."

And then that look came over his face.

And he said, "That's how I'll learn."

His competitive drive was so great.

Yeah I won, sure, but I mean he was walking on the ice on his ankles. One of the great athletes of all time.

One and one the count to Molina....

You have to love how he mixed in game calling with story telling. Simply amazing!

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Watching Troy Percival come in for the Rays, barely touching 90 mph with fastball and hardly displaying any control at all, I wonder how long Joe Maddon will stick with him in the closer role. He promptly gives up two doubles and one of the two outs he recorded has a hard liner right at the third baseman.

Of course, with Percy, an injury is always a possible explanation for his early struggles and nobody would be surprised if he hits the DL sooner than later.

The Rays lack a real household name in the pen who can be trusted to get it done and the bullpen may turn out to be the team's Achilles heel in the end.

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Via the LoHud Yankees Blog:

Xavier Nady had a “sharp pain” in his right elbow in the seventh inning and was taken out of the game.

...

Nady had Tommy John surgery on Sept. 29, 2001. He was injured tonight in the seventh inning when Carlos Pena singled and he threw the ball back to the infield.

“I’m definitely kind of nervous,” Nady said. “But I have to be optimistic. Hopefully it’s scar tissue breaking off. … It was very painful.”

...

Nady will have an MRI tomorrow morning and we should know more by the early afternoon. But it certainly sounds like bad news. For X’s sake, hopefully not.

One could say that's good news for Nick Swisher and possibly for the Yankees if you believe that Swisher was the better option to begin with.

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Tom Glavine is considering retirement if his injured shoulder does not get better soon.

While evaluating Tom Glavine's left shoulder on Tuesday, Dr. James Andrews found an inflamed rotator cuff. ...

"For me now, the glass is probably half-empty simply because I'm frustrated and tired with this whole rehab thing," Glavine said. "But at the same time, being as close as I was, I'm not willing to just say, 'OK, that's it.' I'm willing to put in a little more time. But I'm not willing to put in another six weeks to eight weeks, because by then I'm going to have to start all over again, and I'm not interested in doing that."

...

"This [shoulder] has logged a lot of innings," Glavine said. "Sooner or later, it's going to tell me I can't do this anymore. I hope this is not what it's trying to tell me. But I'm prepared if it is."

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"In Spring Training it would go away and I'd have no side effects whatsoever the next day," Glavine said. "This time, when I woke up on Monday morning, it hurt just as much."

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Glavine won't be reevaluated until he undergoes further treatment while resting his arm for the next two weeks. At that time, he believes that he'll have a pretty good idea about whether or not it's time to end his career, which has included 305 wins and two career Cy Young Awards.

"It works better for me to have a timetable to say, 'OK, let's give it this amount of time,' and if we see some progress, then good we know we're going in the right direction," Glavine said. "If we don't, then I think at that point in time we need to sit down and honestly think about how much more I want to go through this and whether or not anything is going to change."

While I was looking forward to see Tom Glavine match up with Jamie Moyer to go for the record of lowest fastball average in a major league game and I definitely hope that Glavine's shoulder will be pain free and healthy, it would also be neat to have him and Greg Maddux enter Cooperstown together.

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Jeremy Greenhouse of the Baseball analysts want to find out if Ryan Howard is the best field power hitter of all time.

I had a feeling Jim Thome hit a very high percentage of homers to the opposite field. He and Ryan Howard are linked in more ways than one. I have to give credit to Rich Lederer for guessing that Mike Piazza would be among the tops in percentage of homers to the opposite field. But just wait until we get to my man Howard. Sheffield, not surprisingly, pulled twenty times as many homers as he hit the other way.
...
It’s always a pleasure to see Roberto Clemente top any list. The fact that he was such an extreme opposite field power hitter might be a tidbit not many knew about, so I’m glad I can contribute one of the more trivial pieces of information to his legend. I’m surprised to see Julio Franco here. I saw a game or two of his in my day (who didn’t), and I always thought his unique batting stance would be conducive to pulling balls, kind of like Gary Sheffield’s bat wiggle. I guess holding the bat parallel to the ground delays his swing so he makes contact with the ball as it travels further in the zone. Chuck Knoblauch, who was the opposite of Franco in that he held his bat practically parallel to the ground behind him instead of over his head, pulled 75% of his homers. Also irrelevant: Franco's hit multiple homers against both Oil Can Boyd and Russ Ortiz. I doubt many others can say that.

So Ryan Howard is clearly up there. When I made my claim about Howard, it was after seeing that he was the only player in the last four years to have recorded greater than 15 homers in a season to his weak side. I was looking at Baseball Info Solutions data then, which has Howard’s 177 career homers distributed as 37.29% to left, 32.20% to center, and 30.51% to right. So the center field zone I’m using is a bit smaller than that of BIS. I think we can say pretty definitively that he’s a great opposite-field home run hitter, but Clemente seems to be in a class by himself when it comes to opposite%.

Great stuff there, don't forget to go over and check out all the tables at the very least.

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Chien-Ming Wang gave up eight runs, but recorded only three outs and the second tier bullpen arms added seven more runs over the next six innings. With the score 15-5 in favor of the Tampa Bay Rays after seven innings, Yankees manager Joe Giradi send first baseman/outfielder Nick Swisher to the mound, probably in order to save the quality arms left in the pen. Swisher gave up a hit and a walk, but also recorded a strike-out and did not give up any runs.

Watch Swisher pitch on MLB.com

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Enjoy!

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The Angels lead the Red Sox 4-3 in the eight inning. Angels Reliever Scott Shields comes in and clearly struggles to find the strike zone. He walks Ortiz and Youkilis to start the frame. Then after J.D. Drew fouls out, Jason Bay walks on five pitches. With the bases loaded, Shields falls behind 2-0 to Mike Lowell, but the third baseman swing after the next pitch and pops out. The next batter Jason Varitek swings after the first pitch and lines out to center. This is usually how the Angels get themselves out of an inning, not the Red Sox.

Update: Vlad hits his first home runs of the season to lead off the next inning and give the Angels closer a bit more breathing room.

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