Even with a nice 3-1 start to their road trip, the Blue Jays are still under a fair amount of scrutiny, thanks to their (understandable) inability to keep pace with the free-spending Yankees and Red Sox, and their (less understandable) inability to keep their clubhouse problems in the clubhouse.
Ever since Shea Hillenbrand was dispatched to San Francisco with extreme prejudice, speculation has been rampant that Jays manager John Gibbons isn’t handling his team well and could lose his job over it sooner rather than later. But Toronto sportswriter Geoff Baker says that it just doesn’t make any sense to make Gibbons take the fall now.
Apparently, Matt Garza is operating with something less than 20/20 vision, due to his rather ill-advised decision to lean into a high inside paintball shot back in high school. Garza was actually blind in his right eye for nearly a year after the accident, during which time he continued to pitch high school ball. Lens replacement surgery corrected much of the damage, but Garza’s depth perception in the eye is still nearly non-existant. The Twins, by the way, still plan to start Garza this Thursday against Cleveland, and are even considering going with a 13-man pitching staff for the balance of the season.
Kevin Costner returned to Dyersville, Iowa this weekend for the first time since filming wrapped on Field of Dreams. As most Midwest baseball fans know, the site and its famous cornfield-ringed ballfield are a major tourist attraction these days.
Costner’s appearance was sponsored by Netflix, and the actor apparently pitched batting practice to a big group of kids, and played a set with his band (yes, Kevin Costner has a band) before settling in to watch the flick with a cozy crowd of 5,000.
The most surreal part of the Field of Dreams movie site has always been the fact that it is actually owned by not one, but two landowners, and they do not like each other even a little bit. Naturally, this came into play during Costner’s visit. “The Lansing family, which owns the farmhouse, right field and most of the infield, elected not to take part in the event. So officials closed off their property, forcing moviegoers to plant their folding chairs in left and center field.” The Lansings also reportedly threatened to have James Earl Jones killed if anyone in the crowd tried to run the bases.
Finally, Rick Shefcik has a nice roundup of new baseball books to add to your summer reading list – tops on the list may be an outstanding new biography of Roberto Clemente by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Maraniss.
The way you write that makes it seem like you're saying that Gassner has earned a call-up and Perkins' career prospects have taken a dive. I hope you meant it the other way around. Perkins is having a solid year in AA with a 4.05 ERA and 106 K in 100 innings, while Gassner is just about worthless.