Vinny Rottino Signs with the Miami Marlins, and Other Stuff

Happy New Year, everyone!

I figured I’d write a quick blog tonight and mention a few things, mostly in passing, that may be of interest only to me.

First, as the title says, Vinny Rottino has been signed by the Miami Marlins to a minor league deal. This means he’ll have a job in baseball as a player during 2015, which is definitely worth celebrating. Rottino made the AAA All-Star team for the Marlins franchise back in 2011, and got a call-up from them in September as his reward. (I wrote about that here.)

I’m glad that the Marlins front office remembered Rottino, and is giving him another shot to play despite his advanced age (in baseball years only). He’s a smart player, he’s always maximized his ability, and while it’s unlikely now that he’ll be able to make a serious run at a major-league job as a player, it’s far from unlikely that he’ll be able to make the majors in some other capacity later. So it’s very good that the Marlins signed him; my guess is that Rottino’s going to end up mentoring other players in the minors, and probably playing every second or third day. And that may lead him to a managerial or coaching job down the line…which I’m sure he doesn’t want quite yet, but is something to consider for future reference. (Thank goodness it’s still “for future reference,” as I was really worried after he became a free agent again.)

Aside from that, I finished a new short story and sent it to the Writers of the Future Contest on 12/31/14 as I remain eligible. (Not enough book sales as of yet.) I’m glad I was able to do that, as with all of the editing I do — and the holidays, and the family appearances that are well worth going to but normally take away from any available writing time — I don’t get anywhere near as much time to write as I’d like.

And I’m working on two different editorial projects right now, so my blogs may be sporadic for a few weeks until/unless something really grabs my attention…but I do hope to have at least a few book reviews in January 2015 over at Shiny Book Review that may interest you. (Namely the three I didn’t get to at the end of 2014 like I’d planned.)

May your 2015 be all that you want it to be, folks. And may it be a better year for us all.

Vinny Rottino News and Speculation

Folks, I’m editing up a storm and working on a few book reviews right now, but as it’s been a while since my last Vinny Rottino update, I thought it was time for another one.

So here’s the one, little factoid I found out about my favorite baseball player, Racine native Vinny Rottino:

He is apparently again a free agent, this courtesy of his Wikipedia page.

I don’t often use Wikipedia as a source, mind you, but I’d gathered by the few articles I’d seen about Korean baseball in the past few months that Rottino wasn’t seeing much action in the latter stages of their season. Further, I know that Rottino’s age (he’ll be 35 next April) is now against him…professional baseball players often have relatively short “shelf-lives.”

That said, every organization Rottino has played for (mostly in the minor leagues) — the Milwaukee Brewers, the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Miami Marlins (then the Florida Marlins), the New York Mets, and the Cleveland Indians — talked about the potential Rottino had as either a manager or baseball coach. This is because Rottino has always maximized his ability, and because he’s always been known as a smart, savvy baseball player who did whatever he could to help his team win.

I feel terrible, though, writing all of that down. Because I always felt Rottino had major league-level talent. He didn’t get the right breaks in his career to bring him up to the big leagues for more than a few “cups of coffee” now and again, and eventually was saddled with the reputation of a guy who could hit in AAA ball, but wasn’t able to convert in the majors.

Which wasn’t fair to Rottino, because he never got the opportunity to play every day.

And that bad luck followed him to Japan, and then also to Korea.

Mind, Rottino made a little bit of history earlier in 2014 as he was part of the first “all-American” battery (a pitcher-catcher combo from the U.S.) in Korean baseball. And that is no bad thing.

In addition, there’s nothing saying Rottino won’t catch on as a player somewhere else in 2015. He is a good, solid player who can play nearly every position on the field except pitcher. And he’s smart, driven, a high-quality individual…someone who deserves to succeed, because he’s tried so very hard and he really does have talent.

But time is no longer on Rottino’s side. And the longer you are a professional athlete, the more difficult it is to keep going — your body just won’t let you. (Satchel Paige and Julio Franco excluded.)

I hope for Rottino’s sake that he will have options to play. I don’t think he wants to stop playing. And he still has value as a player to the right team and the right setup — someplace he will have an opportunity to play often at a variety of positions would be ideal.

But if this is the end of the line for Rottino as a baseball player — and again, I don’t know that it is (I only suspect it) — I hope all of those teams he played for earlier in his career weren’t just blowing smoke and that there will be opportunities for him to continue in baseball, this time as either a manager or a coach.

Rottino has all the tools needed to succeed no matter what he does next, mind. He has heart. Drive. Dedication. Knowledge, both of baseball and of life. Faith, not just in the Man Upstairs, but in himself and his abilities. And he is demonstrably persistent.

Yes, one thing is clear, no matter what happens next:

Vinny Rottino is a winner.

Blog-hop Madness Coming Soon . . . and Other Things

Folks, the inestimable writer Katharine Eliska Kimbriel has tagged me in a blog-hop called “Four Questions for the Writer.”

Then, so did another of my writer-friends, Dina von Lowenkraft — she of DRAGON FIRE fame — which is why I’m letting you all know that I will be doing this particular blog-hop.

Just not today.

Nope. Instead, I’m going to whet your appetite a little bit and give you a link to Ms. Kimbriel’s current blog post (so you’ll know what the four questions are), and when Ms. von Lowenkraft gets her questions up (which should be soon; I didn’t see it yet, but that may be more about me and my inadequate Web searching abilities than anything else), I’ll be glad to get a link to that as well.

I plan to answer these questions on Sunday . . . by then, I may have some idea of just which writers I’ll be tagging in return, so there should be plenty of blog-hopping fun to go around.

As for everything else, I’m glad the Milwaukee Brewers continue to win baseball games. They’re playing well as a team, and are bouncing back from tough losses (like Tuesday night’s twelve-inning contest, which the Brewers ended up losing, 2-1). Wednesday night’s starter Kyle Lohse looked extremely impressive in seven innings worth of work, giving up only one earned run and striking out five (he did, however, walk an uncharacteristically high four batters, but the walks didn’t hurt him).

And really, every starter with the exception of Matt Garza (who’s going on Friday night against his old team, the Chicago Cubs) has looked very good. The team ERA for Milwaukee’s pitching staff is a sparkling 2.52, and that’s despite the terrible inning Wei Chung-Wang pitched in Pittsburgh (where he gave up six runs in an inning’s worth of work).

It’s mostly because of the Brewers’ outstanding pitching staff that they currently maintain the best record in Major League Baseball at 16-6.

Finally, it’s time for a quick report on what Racine native Vinny Rottino is doing these days. As I discussed a few months ago, Rottino is currently playing in South Korea with the Nexen Heroes, and he’s actually made some baseball history over there.

See, it seems that they’d never had an all-American battery over there (for non-baseball fans, a “battery” is a catcher-pitcher combination). Until April 11, 2014, that is, when Rottino caught Andy Van Hekken — Rottino and Van Hekken were the first all-American battery in the 32-year history of the Korean Baseball Organization.

Here’s how Yonhapnews.com described it (from their English language website):

The 34-year-old, who has caught 305 games in the minors and three in the majors, didn’t look too out of place behind the plate, as the Heroes defeated the Tigers 5-2. Van Hekken tossed seven shutout innings with six hits and four strikeouts to improve to 2-1 with a 1.96 ERA.

Rottino did give up a couple of steals and threw the ball into the left field when trying to nab Kim Sun-bin stealing third.

Kim sprinted home, but Rottino caught left fielder Moon U-ram’s throw and tagged out the runner at home.

Batting ninth, Rottino went 2-for-3 at the plate, and You Jae-sin pinch-ran for him in the seventh.

All I can say is “congratulations” for a job well done — even if I’m a few weeks late off the draw. (Well, better late than never, right?)

Friday Free-for-All

Folks, it’s been a long week. And as you’ve seen, I haven’t exactly blogged . . . but as always, there’s a reason for that.

You see, I’ve been editing. I’ve also been writing, as I’m working on a new story I hope to submit it to Lightspeed Magazine for their “Women Destroy SF” issue. It’s not ready yet, but I have fourteen days to get it in . . . and I will.

(Again, like the F&SF submission earlier this year, I cannot guarantee anything. But I know I have to try.)

And I sent out a submission of a literary fantasy short story to the online magazine Wisdom Crieth Without, which is heavier on poetry than fiction. But they do take some short stories, and as my poetry is too far afield of what they want (their preference is for traditional rhyme and meter; there’s nothing wrong with that, but that usually isn’t what I write, and my few attempts at such have been miserable failures), I thought I’d try a story instead.

And, as if all that wasn’t enough, I’ve been keeping the first half of ELFY on the front burner also, as I’m about to send it to my publisher (later today, in fact, after I’ve done one last read-through to make sure I haven’t missed anything). I’ll let you all know if and when the first half of ELFY gets retitled; one of my good friends suggested AN ELFY ON THE LOOSE, which sounds at least as good as the only title that’s come to mind whenever I’ve thought about it — AN ELFY ALONE. And the benefits of the former title would be that people would know right away that my book is a comic urban fantasy, so maybe my publisher will go for it?

(I know that AN ELFY ALONE sounds more formal than I intend. And yes, authors do think about things at just this micro-level, sometimes . . . why do you ask?)

Everything else I’ve wanted to blog about, including a nice article by Peter Jackel of the Racine Journal-Times about Vinny Rottino’s continued progress in baseball (giving far more information about just what happened to Rottino last year in Japan, though it oddly didn’t discuss the injury Rottino suffered that required surgery on his shoulder — the last is the best I could figure out, mind you, as the Japanese Web sites’ translations can be really dicey), the interesting story about Northwestern University’s football players wanting to unionize as they’re beyond tired of losing scholarships after getting injured — something that is one of the great shames of college sports, I might add — and also want to have some long-term medical help available due to concussions suffered during on-field performance, as well as goodly number of others things, has gone completely by the boards.

In addition, I’m awaiting word on when a second guest blog, based off my December 18, 2013 post about writing and cross-promotion, will be published over at the prestigious writing Web site Murder By Four.  This could be as soon as later today, or it could be sometime next week . . . all I know is, whenever it goes up I’ll be coming here to let y’all know all about it.

For those of you wondering if I’m going to review any books this week, I hope to review at least one book, possibly two. The book I know I can review is L.E. Modesitt, Jr.’s THE ONE-EYED MAN, a far-future political science fiction thriller. There is some romance involved, so it could even go on Saturday . . . but probably, if I can get everything I need to done by this evening, I’ll write the review then. The second book is a straight-up Regency romance by talented newcomer Giselle Marks; it’s a bit more period in its descriptions than most Regencies written in the past forty-five to fifty years, which can be startling at times, and I’m still trying to figure out how to render all that.

At any rate, the weather remains cold, there’s way too much snow on the ground, Milwaukee Brewers announcer Bob Uecker has said he plans to cut back on some of his announcing this year, pitchers and catchers report for the Brewers in a few weeks, the Milwaukee Bucks are still awful, I don’t particularly care about the Super Bowl but probably will watch it anyway . . . hope I covered all the bases.

Stay warm, folks.

Vinny Rottino to Play in S. Korea in 2014 (Plus Brewers Search for First Baseman)

Folks, after Racine native Vinny Rottino’s injury-plagued 2013 campaign in Japan, I was concerned.  Then when I deduced that he was given his outright release by the Orix Buffaloes of the Japanese Professional Baseball League, I really started to worry about where Rottino was going to play in 2014 — or if he was even going to find a team to play for at all.

Mind, I say “deduced” because most of the Japanese baseball sites have to be translated to be useable.  The translations can be dicey — for example, I’ve seen a walk called a “dead ball” in Japanese translation, and some of the other stats can be just as interesting to figure out.

What wasn’t hard to figure out, though, were Rottino’s 2013 stats: 37 games played, 111 plate appearances, a .206 batting average . . . the four homers, the eight RBI, and the single stolen base notwithstanding, this obviously was not the year Rottino was hoping to have in Japan.

Despite Rottino’s talent, he’s now 33 years old; yes, he plays the infield, the outfield, and catches — which is a very rare skill set.  He’s good at all of them, too, and had a stellar Triple-A career, being named to the Triple-A All-Star team several times (most recently in 2011 while in the Florida Marlins organization).

But the timing was never right for Rottino; while with the Milwaukee Brewers organization, Rottino never got a chance to play regularly —  despite being the Brewers minor league player of the year in 2004.

And Rottino seems to need to play regularly to be successful, as has been shown over and over in his minor league career.  (Not that this is any real surprise, of course; most baseball players are like anyone else.  You do much better at something if you are able to do it every day rather than once in a great while.)

Watching Rottino continue his baseball career is both inspirational and frustrating — inspirational because he has refused to give up (for which I applaud him), but frustrating because he obviously has the talent to succeed . . . but time is no longer on his side.

At the age of 33, it gets harder and harder for any baseball player to find teams willing to pay him to play.  And in Rottino’s case, the major leagues are now out of reach.  Japan didn’t work for him, partly due to an ill-timed injury (then again, when are injuries ever convenient?).  So I didn’t know what would be next for Rottino — would he end up as a coach, as the Milwaukee Brewers, Florida Marlins, Los Angeles Dodgers, and several other teams have expressed interest in hiring him as such once his playing career is over?

Would he end up in the Mexican League?

Would he end up taking a year off from baseball, as health-wise it might be desirable — remember, I don’t have hard information to work with, as Rottino was just too far away for me to keep a good eye on, but I do know that when you get above age thirty, injuries can be tougher to rehab.  (Witness former Milwaukee Brewers first baseman Corey Hart’s struggles last year as a case in point.)

At any rate, I asked a friend if she’d heard anything about Vinny Rottino, as I was concerned.  Fortunately, she’d seen a wire story, which is here, about Rottino signing to play with the Nexen Heroes over in South Korea on December 10, 2013.

Rottino is in good company, as former big leaguers Luke Scott and Felix Pie, among others, have recently signed to play over in Korea.  And Korean baseball has been growing in prestige lately, partly because of Shin-Soo Choo’s success in MLB.

I’m very pleased to see that Rottino will continue his baseball career in 2014.  I hope he has a great season in Korea and enjoys himself immensely.

Now, as for my plea to the Milwaukee Brewers regarding their first base situation — there is one and only one obvious solution to this mess: Sign Manny Ramirez already.

Ramirez is a free agent.  Yes, he’s been tainted twice with performance-enhancing drug allegations.  But he can still play ball, is a power hitter, and I’m betting he can play first base with the best of them.

The Brewers must think outside the box, because every player they’d normally think about has been taken.  The players I’ve heard as current possibilities for the Brewers include Tyler Colvin, who hit .241 during his 2013 campaign; Ike Davis, who’s bounced back and forth between Triple-A and the majors and had a low batting average of .205; and Carlos Pena, who hit all of .207 during 2013.

None of these players will make any difference to the Milwaukee Brewers — not one.

Whereas Ramirez is a career .312 hitter with 555 HRs, 1831 RBIs and a .411 on-base percentage.  Yes, he’s now 41.  Yes, he only hit .259 last year with Texas’ Triple-A team in limited playing time.  But the man can still hit — witness how he tore up the Taiwanese league last year, prompting his signing to first Oakland’s Triple-A team, then Texas’s.  He truly seems remorseful for his past actions.  And I’m certain he could do a better job than Colvin, Davis, Pena, or maybe all three of them put together.

Yes, the Brewers should be cautious and go over his medical records.  They should make sure Ramirez is clean, healthy, sober, whatever else they need to do — but they should make a serious push toward seeing if Ramirez has anything left.

Because it’s either sign Ramirez, or coax Geoff Jenkins out of retirement at this point — and while I loved Jenkins as a player, he retired five full years ago.