Tuesday, July 22, 2003 | 8:54 a.m.
MLB snapshot
By Rob Miech
He walked in the first inning in an independent Northern League game against Gary. After several years in the Negro Leagues, he hooked on with Single-A San Diego in 1948. With proper diet and sufficient workouts, he'll make it eight decades in seven years.
He felt so distraught at the start of the weekend, Byrnes said he felt like apologizing to his teammates for his lack of production at the leadoff spot. A's manager Ken Macha said Byrnes has nothing to apologize for, because he plays hard every day.
They're nine games off last season's pace, and the Mariners and Athletics are better now than they were at this time a year ago. Still, manager Mike Scioscia deservedly had his contract extended recently, and Anaheim is in safe hands with him at the wheel.
Starting Wednesday, they play eight in a row against divisional foes, including the first two in Minnesota. KC has slammed its Central brethren this season, winning 29 of 38 games against it.
Two questions, and only two, were asked of yours truly last week regarding the intrigue of the All-Star Game "meaning" something for the first half of the week and the Pete Rose "situation" for the last half.
Wednesday was overlap day, when each was asked with equal frequency.
Both were dodged, every time. There's a bigger issue, went the response, a beguiling one that doesn't seem possible, or plausible, in this supposed "modern" era of the game.
Sixteen teams in one league, 14 in the other. When Milwaukee was shifted to the National League in 1998, an imbalance was created as egregious, we thought, as the competitive one that keeps the Devil Rays from keeping up with the Yankees.
Seattle must finish with a better record than only three other teams to win the American League Western Division, while the Brewers are on track to repeat the notorious feat of baseball's lone sixth-place finish.
The NL Central is the game's only division with six teams because of the Brewers' move in '98. Since then, however, Pittsburgh and the Chicago Cubs have both brought up the rear of the division twice.
There will be no changes for at least four years, though, courtesy of last summer's rancor -- and eventual settlement -- between the players' union and team owners that made the imbalanced leagues issue moot.
The quashing of contraction, which could have evened the Nationals and the Americans, played a role in the continuation of the imbalance.
It isn't as easy to solve as, say, simply slipping the Brewers back to the AL, to the Central, then shipping Kansas City to the AL West, either, which was clarified by an official in the Major League Baseball offices in New York.
In that scenario, there would be 15 teams in each league. That would mean, on most days of the season, a team in each league would be idle. A full slate of games would only occur during the interleague schedule.
That is not acceptable to the real players of the game, who sit in their offices high atop New York in skyscrapers on Park Avenue and East 49th Street.
"It's not something I've heard, for the near future," said the MLB source, who requested anonymity. "It was brought up, but in terms of contraction. And you saw where that (went). On anyone's list, it's not high up there."
In the tense bargaining sessions of a year ago, players relented on other issues to ensure that "contraction" would not come up again -- saving dozens of big-league jobs -- until the end of the new deal, which runs through the 2007 season.
At that point, two teams might be cut or two added.
The second option seems remote, given the widespread acknowledgment that baseball expanded too quickly when it let Arizona and Tampa Bay into its fraternity in 1998.
Then again, the MLB insider acknowledged that having 16 teams in each league is considered optimal by team owners and league executives.
From 1901-60, the American and National leagues were comprised of the same number of teams.
In '61, the Los Angeles Angels and the new Washington Senators were added to the AL. (The old Washington Senators had moved to Minnesota to become the Twins.) A year later, however, it evened out when the NL added the Houston Astros and New York Mets.
Since 1977, when Toronto and Seattle joined the AL, the leagues have been on unequal footing for 22 of 27 seasons.
Arizona, which began play in 1998, had been targeted for the AL. Owner Jerry Colangelo fought it fiercely, then the idea was extinguished in the winter of 2000.
Sending Houston to the AL has also been broached, as have "a number of different ideas," said the MLB official, but nothing is of immediate concern.
"It will be determined at a later date," he said. "I can't see it coming up before the end of this contract (in '07). It just isn't a priority."
The large, computer-driven advertisements on that rectangular stretch of nonsense behind home plate aren't too annoying either, are they? Most often, that gaudy tool was centered on the screen instead of the pitcher, catcher and hitter.
We'll try to overlook those distractions, though. What mattered most was the passion displayed by AL and Anaheim Angels manager Mike Scioscia, who actually argued a call in this "meaningless" game.
In addition, he deftly saved 22-year-old lefty Hank Blalock for a late situation, perhaps against Dodgers closer Eric Gagne. Blalock wound up hitting the deciding home run off Gagne.
Once again, the Dodgers look like dummies -- as if last year's World Series title didn't suffice -- for inexplicably letting Scioscia escape in 1999, during the notorious run of general manager Kevin "The Sheriff" Malone.
The Disney folks did something right during their short tenure in baseball, snatching Scioscia the moment the Dodgers released him from his managerial responsibilities at Triple-A Albuquerque.
If the All-Star Game becomes an annual drama, because of the World Series home-field advantage that is at stake, then kudos to baseball. Mostly, though, kudos to Scioscia.
Sorry, doesn't wash in our idea of jurisprudence. Throw in the figures of questionable repute whose plaques hang in Cooperstown, and the belief here is that Rose's image will only improve the place.
Last week's jury from the ESPN mock trial got it right when it voted to allow Rose to be placed on the HoF ballot.
The Plain Dealer of Cleveland commented that Ludwick, a former Durango High and UNLV player whose right-handed power potential the Indians covet, has "the same number of hip surgeries as big-league homers."
That would be one. For the record, Spencer has suffered from a serious hip injury, too.
Cleveland called Ludwick, then he traveled to New York for his first visit to Yankee Stadium. As the Indians' designated hitter Saturday, he went 0-for-4, striking out twice, in a 7-4 defeat to the Bombers.
Sunday, he flied out as a pinch-hitter in the seventh inning of another eventual 7-4 loss, dropping his season batting average to .129.
He raised that to .171 on Monday, though, with a 2-for-4 effort against the White Sox. He also recorded an assist from right field, and he stole his first base of the season.
That beats a year ago, when Ludwick suffered a painful, season-ending hip stress fracture at Triple-A Oklahoma that made him ponder the possibility that he'd never play again.
Although Ludwick admitted that the hip is not "100 percent," Cleveland general manager Eric Wedge said he and his staff did their research and consider the injury to be a non-issue.
Ludwick hit .303 in 81 games at Oklahoma this season, and he hit only .154 in his last eight games as a Ranger.
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