The Crane Pool Forum

Edgy MD wrote: ↑Thu Jan 19, 2023 5:02 pm I thought you were down on Pillar.

This winter, Geelong Korea reached out to Koo and he immediately took them up on their offer. He appeared in three games, giving up zero earned runs and striking out two batters over 2 1/3 innings. He told me he's lost about 10 mph on his fastball -- it's sitting at around 75 mph -- but maybe, as he told the Korea JoongAng Daily, that helped.

"The ball was so slow that the batters didn’t seem to know what to do with it.”

Koo broke his own record as the oldest man to appear in an ABL game. He's now played professionally in four different decades, he's fired fastballs for four different leagues in four different countries and three separate continents. He's been toeing up rubbers for an incredible 30 years. It's reminiscent of Satchel Paige's extended swan song -- a pitcher Koo mimicked in high school.

He said he has no plans to pitch (or hit) in this year's WBC, although he'll be following Korea's progress through Pool B. Still, he seems dead-set on never fully retiring, saying, "I want to show that age is not the limit of your performance."

"My goal is pitch for as long as I can, wherever it is," Koo told me. "Whether it's here, Korea -- as long as I'm able to use my arm to do what I love."

G-Fafif wrote: ↑Thu Feb 09, 2023 11:21 am Chase Utley be damned

G-Fafif wrote: ↑Thu Feb 16, 2023 12:48 pm Terry Collins and Dave Wallace have been hired as consultants by the Marlins.

“Yeah, I was on a heater not wearing an undershirt — on a hot streak, I mean,” Conforto said. “And I don’t know, we just started ripping guys’ shirts off.”

We, meaning Pete Alonso?

“Pete. Yeah. He thought it was funny, and you know what? It was,” Conforto said. “I tried to put it back on (for the TV interview) but it was completely shredded. It looked like a polar bear attacked me.”

“Oh yeah, that was Pete’s thing,” said Davis, who at least retained his sleeveless blue undershirt after his double delivered the Mets their 13th victory in 17 games. “He’s like, ‘I’m ripping your shirt off.’ As you could see, he almost ripped my neck off.”

When the Mets started their run, they were 53-56 and mostly dead in the water. By the time Davis touched off the celebration against Cleveland, they were 66-60 and one game out of the NL wild-card chase. The Mets would endure a six-game losing streak not long after that and they missed the postseason by three games. But over that winning stretch in August, Conforto and Davis felt what it was like to energize a city when a fan base least expected it — all while reinforcing a rollicking clubhouse culture.

“We were part of that young core, along with Pete and (Brandon) Nimmo and (Jeff) McNeil, and we just had fun together,” Conforto said. “Especially in the second half of our season, we just wanted to have a good time playing with each other. J.D. and I, that was our best ball when we were really enjoying ourselves. I think it’s going to be easy for us to continue to do that. I’m already feeling that atmosphere here. I think we’re going to have a blast.”

Davis identified that stretch in 2019 as the time when Conforto transformed himself from an emerging star outfielder to a team leader — something that wasn’t easy while playing for a franchise that bobbed from one controversy to the next.

“We had COVID, two different owners, three different GMs, four different hitting coaches …” Davis said. “You could say it wasn’t the most stable environment the last couple years. But Michael became one of the leaders on that squad, especially in 2019. Even though we came up short, he led that team and was one of the reasons we had that push in the second half.