Church update
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- May
- 22
Ryan Church, who sustained a mild concussion Tuesday night, will not play tonight.
He’ll do some jogging and take batting practice, and said he hopes to play tomorrow in Denver.
Braves manager Bobby Cox was critical of Church’s slide, saying he came in late.
“I wasn’t trying to hurt him,” Church said. “I play the game hard.”
This entry was posted
on Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 at 4:39 pm by John Delcos.
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JD: Thanks for the kind words last night in your last entry. I’m a recovering newspaper reporter-turned-magazine-editor, so my cynicism has abated. Funny, I thought the words “cyncism” and “Mets fan” couldn’t possibly be used in the same sentence—until the bitterness engendered by last year’s collapse!
I thought both of Church’s slides were a little too aggressive, and I agree with Cox specifically about the second one (i.e., that Church seemed to slide late and high). That said, I think Escobar knew exactly what he was doing with that soccer kick.
I agree with Cox. I’m a big fan of Church’s, but that’s not an aggressive play, it’s a stupid play. You don’t go into 2nd like that down by 4 runs in the 9th.
I think that was church’s way of trying to light a fire under his team but it back fired.
I’m sure it’s tough for the slide not to be “late” when the SS is running toward you into your basepath. What’s he supposed to do, slide 15 feet in front of the bag and never get remotely close to it? What if the SS failed to touch the bag? What if the SS drops the ball and you’re in the process of making a slide 15 feet in front of the bag so as not to get in his way? It was an aggressive play, but he wasn’t trying to hurt Escobar there.
If you were able to listen to the Met game on ESPN last night you would have heard Rick Sutcliffe blast Church for his play at the end of the game.
Well if Rick Sutcliffe said it, then it must be true.
In all seriousness, Escobar himself said that it was a clean slide. Watch the replay – Escobar is 8 feet into the basepath when they collided, was Church supposed to just stop running? Slide 15 feet short of the bag? Run back to first?
The point Donn was that unlike you and me Sutcliff was a neutral and has an unbiased opinion. And Church was far past the point where he should have either slid or gotten out of the way. He probably didn’t want to hurt anybody, but he certainly was at fault for the collison.