Andrus donates baseball, softball gear to HS
In the midst of gearing up for another season with the Rangers, Elvis Andrus took a moment on Monday to help some Dallas high school baseball and softball players get ready for their own season. The tornadoes that hit North Texas on Oct. 20 inflicted heavy damage on Dallas’ Thomas
In the midst of gearing up for another season with the Rangers, Elvis Andrus took a moment on Monday to help some Dallas high school baseball and softball players get ready for their own season.
The tornadoes that hit North Texas on Oct. 20 inflicted heavy damage on Dallas’ Thomas Jefferson High School. Since that time, the Rangers have been providing support to the baseball and softball teams.
On Monday, the Rangers' shortstop added to that support by donating baseball and softball equipment.
“You guys are the future of this country and this world. For me and the rest of the organization, we support that and we’re behind you guys. We want to help you guys and your team as much as we can,” Andrus told Thomas Jefferson baseball and softball players gathered at the Rangers' MLB Youth Academy at Mercy Street Sports Complex, Presented by Toyota, for the presentation.
Donated items included equipment bags, helmets, bats, gloves, catchers gear, baseballs, softballs and more.
Thomas Jefferson head softball coach Terry Mercer estimated that 80 to 85 percent of the team’s gear had been lost to the storm.
“A lot of the equipment was very old. A lot of the equipment and apparel we had was lost due to the storm, whether it be water damage or just totally lost," Mercer said. "We had a container outside that had some of our big equipment, and it ended up on the top of someone’s house a block or so over from the school."
The Patriots didn’t lose just their equipment to the tornado -- they also lost their home field. But the Rangers and the Rangers Youth Academy have been able to help there, too, since Thomas Jefferson will join Pinkston and Sunset high schools in practicing and playing home baseball and softball games at the facility in 2020.
“We had been working on our field. We just got a new scoreboard and a new banner. Our field was being worked on and the tornado destroyed it all," Thomas Jefferson senior Hannia Zavala recalled. "It was really rough for us."
“It was a little stressful thinking, ‘What are we going to do? Are we going to have to play all of our games on the road?’ Which would probably have been the next step," Mercer said. "And then the Texas Rangers Youth Academy stepped up."
For his part, Andrus was excited to help the student-athletes continue to develop their passion for the game he loves.
And the Texas Rangers also honored Andrus on Monday for his generosity to the Texas Rangers Baseball Foundation and its Youth Academy by renaming the first-base dugout on Johnny Oates Field Presented by Papa John’s to the Elvis Andrus First Base Dugout.
“Coming from Venezuela, the sport is everything for me, for my family. It’s the reason I’m here, I can help support all my family," Andrus said. "And now I can support and help the community and other people affected. This sport is amazing. It’s a passion that you need to create in all these kids, a habit. It’s always great to be part of letting them continue to have that passion and follow their dreams."
Opinion: Dusty Baker the right choice to be named as manager of the Houston Astros
This week we start with cheating scandal that's making headlines. The MLB dropped the hammer on the Houston Astros after discovering they were using an elaborate scheme to steal signs. USA TODAY
The Houston Astros, a franchise in the crosshairs of Major League Baseball’s cheating scandal, is about to choose Dusty Baker to be their next manager, according to a person familiar with the hiring.
The person spoke to USA TODAY Sports on the condition of anonymity because Baker’s contract has yet to be finalized.
Baker, 70, the three-time National League Manager of the Year who guided four teams to nine postseason berths, seven division titles and an NL pennant, is the perfect choice.
This organization finally did something right.
Baker is the ideal man to get them through perhaps the most tumultuous time an entire organization will face since the Black Sox scandal in 1919.
The Astros, caught using illegal electronic equipment to steal signs, resulting in the suspensions and firings of GM Jeff Luhnow and manager A.J. Hinch, are going to be facing horrendous backlash every time they leave the city limits of Houston.
They will be insulted, scorned, and ridiculed.
And that’s just by the opposing players.
Fans will taunt them every time they step to the plate, hearing chants of “Cheater! Cheater! Cheater!’’
It will be relentless and vicious.
Baker most recently spent two seasons (2016-2017) as the Nationals' manager (Photo: Brad Mills, USA TODAY Sports)
“I’m sure,’’ Astros pitcher Lance McCullers Jr. said last week, “it’s going to be hostile.’’
Astros owner Jim Crane, realizing what lies ahead, had to find the man that would best insulate the clubhouse from the outside noise, and threats, keeping them together.
He chose Baker.
Baker, who has led his teams to three division championships in the last five years in Cincinnati and Washington, is the Dalai Lama of managers.
There’s no manager in the game more well-liked, respected and admired by his peers and players throughout the industry.
“His greatest attribute is the way he manages people,’’ Davey Lopes, the former Dodger great and long-time friend of Baker’s, told USA TODAY Sports in 2017. “I find it hard to find someone who’s better.
“Getting the best out of the players, getting them to want to play, getting them to want to put that extra effort into it, that takes a special talent.’’
That attribute will be needed more than ever when it will be so easy for the Astros to succumb to the pressure and distractions, and fall apart.
It’s up to Baker to make sure it doesn’t happen.
So when the entire team assembles in spring training on Feb. 17 at West Palm Beach, Florida, Baker will have them gather around, and he’ll tell them about his own battlefield.
He withstood the heavy scrutiny during the 80s when some of his closest friends were implicated in the Pittsburgh drug trials, resulting in mandatory drug tests the rest of his playing career.
He endured the public embarrassment of the IRS coming after him for $4 million in back taxes and penalties when a series of tax shelters were disallowed, garnishing his paychecks.
He insulated Barry Bonds from the media circus in 2001 when he set the single-season home run record with 73 amid the BALCO fallout, and kept the feud between his two best players, Jeff Kent and Bonds, from dividing the clubhouse.
He will remind the Astros the importance of staying together, just as he kept his two best players, Bonds and Jeff Kent – who once fought in the dugout – from dividing the clubhouse.
He has been fired four times as manager and hired five times.
He has had glory, winning more games than any active manager, and horrific heartbreak. He was one game away from winning the 2002 World Series when the San Francisco Giants lost the World Series in 7 games to the Los Angeles Angels in 2002, and his Chicago Cubs’ team squandered a 3-to-1 lead to the Miami Marlins in the 2003 NLCS.
He survived prostate cancer, an irregular heartbeat and a stroke.
He also persevered through racism in his playing career, and later as a manager, deluged with hate letters when managing the Chicago Cubs.
Now, here he is, being given the greatest challenge of his managerial career, ensuring this talented collection of players stays strong in what looms as the most ordeal they’ve faced.
If Baker leads the Astros back to the World Series, the road could lead him right to baseball’s greatest resting place: Baseball’s Hall of Fame Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y.
“It would mean a lot to me and my family to be the first African-American manager in there,’’ Baker recently told USA TODAY. “But what matters to me the most is the championship. That’s what I want. I want to be a World Series champion.
“That’s what has always brought me back.’’
He is in for one final ride, knowing deep in his heart that he deserved another chance, while believing he was the perfect man for an imperfect job.
His calming presence will help soothe the angry masses.
You can loathe the Astros all you want, but how can anyone be mad at Baker?
He had nothing to do with it. Why, his Washington Nationals team even played the Astros at Minute Maid Park in 2017 during the heart of the scandal, and took two of the three games, trash can knocking and all.
He’ll be asked about whether he suspected the Astros of cheating that series. He’ll be asked in whether the Astros’ players should have been disciplined. He’ll be asked how the Astros should handle the scandal going forward.
Baker, who has managed everyone from Bonds to Sammy Sosa to Bryce Harper and Joey Votto, will handle all of the scrutiny impeccably.
He’ll be in complete control, shielding his team the best he can from all the hatred.
He comes along at just the right time when not only the Astros, but Major League Baseball, needs him most.
Baker is ready to buckle up for the ride of his life.
Follow Nightengale on Twitter: @Bnightengale
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Last SlideNext SlideHow the No. 1 bat maker in MLB is looking to disrupt the baseball glove market
Consumers can choose among four options when buying a CMOD glove online: Medium or large, and shift or straight hand position.
In 2014, MarketWatch wrote about Scott Carpenter, who made a modernized version of the baseball glove out of his home. He made each one based on a mold or sketch of the user’s hand and used synthetic materials that made the gloves lighter and easier to break in than traditional leather gloves. The title of our story asked, “Is this the baseball glove of the future?”
Carpenter now makes gloves in a new glove-making lab in Cooperstown. That’s one of many changes that have occurred since Marucci Sports acquired Carpenter’s company, Carpenter Trade LLC, in 2018. Marucci Sports is less than 20 years old and already has more MLB players using its bats than any other brand, Carpenter says, adding that he hopes the company makes similar strides with baseball gloves.
“I couldn’t be happier with the situation with Marucci. It’s kind of perfect in a lot of ways,” Carpenter recently told MarketWatch. “We have a common vision of disrupting the glove market. Marucci is better suited to do it than most other brands.”
The glove Scott Carpenter made for MLB All-Star Josh Donaldson.
Marucci owns “everything” Carpenter designed and invented. In exchange, he is now the company’s master glove designer. Carpenter, 48, says his top motivation to sell was to get to the next level — “to make the best gloves for the best players on the planet. To make the best glove in baseball, period.” He says he knew he’d have to partner with a larger company to take advantage of things like 3-D technology.
He also received money for being acquired, and says, “It was worthwhile financially. I’m less worried now about retirement and benefits after working for a number of years below the cost of living.” Marucci is based in Baton Rouge, La., and it has production partners in China. Carpenter has traveled to both locations several times since the partnership began.
The CMOD glove — traditional leather on the outside with a high-tech inside
Carpenter had success with his all-synthetic gloves — in 2011 pitcher Brian Gordon was called up by the Yankees to make his MLB debut and he used his Carpenter glove, which is now in the Hall of Fame as the first all-synthetic glove used in a game. But Carpenter realized around 2015 that his reputation in the baseball world was that he made an all-synthetic glove, and that they were seen as a curiosity or novelty. He made a business decision then to change his reputation, to better convey that he used “a lot of technology and engineering to make a better glove.” So he started modifying other brands’ gloves — for example, Rawlings, Wilson and Mizuno. “I’d take them apart. Rip out the lining and padding, and reinsert my own technology into the glove and put it back into the same outer shell, he says.” He called it a CMOD — for Carpenter modification — and says it showed people that what he did enhanced the performance of existing gloves. “And it all led to the acquisition” by Marucci, he says.
Since partnering with Marucci, he has an All-Star major leaguer using a CMOD, and hundreds of CMODs recently went on sale to the public.
Josh Donaldson, who was the American League MVP in 2015 and has been an All-Star three times, was already using a traditional Marucci glove, but since Carpenter joined the company he started using a CMOD.
Donaldson says ”the CMOD technology takes a lot of weight out of your glove,” and adds, “it’s form fitting, to where you’re going to have more control over your glove…it’s almost like a glove inside of a glove.” He says it allows him to be very accurate, especially when on the run. He calls it “a real game-changer.”
Carpenter made Donaldson’s glove based on a sketch of his hand, and will personally make gloves for other MLB players who use a CMOD as well. The gloves that recently went on sale for consumers were made in China. Carpenter went to China and sat with the glove-making team there to walk them through the process step-by-step, according to Eric Walbridge, vice president of soft goods for Marucci, which includes fielding gloves, batting gloves and equipment bags. He says Marucci started selling 300 CMODs on Jan. 20.
Marucci also sells traditional baseball gloves, without the Carpenter modifications. The prices for those range from $89 to $350, and the price for CMODs is $350. Walbridge says Marucci started selling baseball gloves in 2013 and it was “really smart to go after Scott” to do something different to stand out while competing against companies like Rawlings and Wilson, the two biggest sellers of gloves in the world.
The inside of Donaldson’s glove -- all hand-done by Carpenter.
For the gloves currently on sale on Marucci’s website, Carpenter designed injected molded parts via 3-D modeling and printing. Another thing that makes these CMOD gloves different is that they come in different sizes (most companies only sell adult and child sizes, Carpenter says). Currently you can buy a medium or a large, and the company has plans to add many more sizes, including extra small, small and extra large. It also comes in two different hand positions — shift or straight (see graphic above for the difference). It’s a few ounces lighter than a traditional all-leather glove because some of the leather on the inside is replaced with synthetics.
“When you squeeze this glove, you have better leverage. More than with a thumb loop, which pulls to the right or left,” Carpenter says. “It’s hard to describe, but you notice it immediately when you put it on.”
What’s next
Carpenter says not much has changed in the making of baseball gloves in the past 50 years, and his goal is to lead on the evolution of the baseball glove. “Marucci is in a unique position. Most other brands don’t have someone like me in the U.S. physically making gloves every day. Most rely on factory partners overseas,” he says.
Walbridge says a goal for the company is to have more MLB players using the gloves. “This spring training we’ll be showing the CMOD and discussing it with a lot more players,” he says.
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