HENCH’S HARDBALL: Opinions expressed in Hardball are not necessarily those of Boston Dirt Dogs, Big Dog, or our sponsors:

Date: Sunday, July 29, 2001
From: Kevin Hench
Subject: Everett Comeback: Seamless, Unseemly

Remember the last time we saw Carl Everett?  He was sprawling after a ball
that he clearly had no chance of catching, having taken a bad angle to
further ensure that he would not even get a glove on the ball and that the
go-ahead run would score from first.  That play was, in fact, an eerily exact
replication of a misguided, flailing dive at a Tino Martinez gapper that
allowed a runner to score from first in a game we ended up losing, 7-6.

So should it have surprised any of us to see "Bad Hustle" Carl blazing toward
the wall on a ball he clearly couldn't catch and getting so close to the wall
that the carom eluded him?  Of course not.  Carl is in it for Carl.  He'll
never make the smart, conservative  play.  He'll never move the runners over
with, say, two on and none out in the bottom of the sixth inning of a 1-1
game.  No, he'll lunge at a ball in the dirt for strike one, foul off an
obvious bunting-for-a-hit-when-we-really-need-a-sacrifice attempt and then
pop up.  And were we surprised when he fanned against Keith Foulke with the
tying runs on base in the eighth?  Of course not.  Why?  Because Foulke
throws a good changeup, a pitch that Carl - in his crazed, undisciplined,
can't-keep-his-hands-back way - is simply incapable of hitting.  Bounce three
changeups and Carl will be done.  The word is out and, as a result, Carl
Everett is a remarkably average player.

I'm sure no one here has forgotten the 7-6 loss to the A's when Carl was
thrown out at third from left field, preempting the tying run from crossing
the plate.  The mistake was colossal, but the "I'd do it again" comment was
much more revelatory.  Apparently the concept of "Mea Culpa" doesn't exist in
Carl's bible. 

In that spiteful, I-just-cost-my-team-the-game-but-refuse-to-apologize moment, he
seemed the epitome of a Ralph Nader voter.  Both Carl and the Nader voter know
they have done something horribly wrong.  They can tell because people are badgering
and hectoring them and demanding an explanation.  The Nader voter - in the
face of Ashcroft, Kyoto, et al. - resolutely sticks to his guns,  repeating the mantra,
"There is no difference between the two major parties," and defiantly insists, "I'd do it
again."  Carl - in the face of 130 years of baseball evolution that stamps it a sin to make
the first or third out at third base - is equally adroit at ignoring that nagging thing called truth
and proclaims, "I'd do it again."  Think about it.  He is saying, if the situation arises again,
I will not hesitate to repeat the mistake that previously cost my team a game.  That, my friends,
is Carl Everett.  Dick Allen has met his match.

Word on the street is that Sunday the Sox will get a team player back, guy by
the name of Nomar.

Mike Lansing has a higher batting average than Jose Offerman.

I'll give you a set of stats, you tell me which guy is in the lineup every day, playing first
against lefties, second against lefties, killing the team each day.

                           Avg.                On-Base%      Slugging%
Offerman            .253                .323                .347
Daubach             .265                .355                .516
Stynes                .300                .353                .465

And there are still guys out there who refuse to believe Jimy Williams is a moron.

Kev