WEDNESDAY,APRIL 17.2002
SPORTS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN = 5B
Cardinals pitcher injures back, expects quick recovery
The Associated Press
ST. LOUIS — Garrett Stephenson, who beat the clock in his recovery from elbow surgery, doesn't intend to let lower back spasms sideline him for long.
The St. Louis Cardinals righthander, who returned to the rotation less than a year after his major operation, left his last start on Sunday when his back locked up after three innings. He was in rehab in St. Louis while the team left for the first leg of a season-long 13-game trip, and could make his scheduled start Friday at Milwaukee.
"It just doesn't make sense
sometimes, but it's all muscle," Stephenson said. "So hopefully I'll have a pretty good chance to make my start. It'll probably be one of those little three-day things."
Mark O'Neal, one of the team's trainers working with Stephenson, said the pitcher was much improved on Monday, and again yesterday.
He planned to forward a positive report to the team.
That's potentially good news for a suddenly thin rotation. The Cardinals entered spring training with seven bona fide starting candidates before subtracting left-hander Rick Ankiel, with elbow tendinitis, and right-hander Woody Williams, with a pulled side muscle, from the equation.
Ankiel was scheduled to begin a light throwing program this week.
A third starter, Andy Benes, has struggled in all three of his starts. He has lasted a total of 10 innings.
Williams could return to the rotation by mid-May and Ankiel in late May.
"Things like this happen," Stephenson said. "The starters will come out later on in the year and we'll pick up the bullpen."
If Stephenson (0-2) can't pitch on Friday, the Cardinals have a pair of options in right-handers
Travis Smith and Josh Pearce. Smith was recalled from Triple-A Memphis and made his major-league debut in the Cardinals' 14 loss to the Diamondbacks, allowing four runs in four innings in relief of Benes.
Pearce was the team's secondround draft pick in 1999 and impressed the Cardinals in spring training, although he's 0-3 with a 6.19 ERA at Memphis and has allowed five home runs in 16 innings.
The Cardinals also could turn to left-handed reliever Mike Matthews, who was 2-4 in 10 starts last year.
"We'll cross that bridge when the time comes," pitching coach
Dave Duncan said. "We'll make sure somebody is available on that day."
Stephenson, a 16-game winner in 2000, struggled in his first start but threw six shutout innings against Milwaukee in his second outing before tiring. He said the injury came "pretty much out of nowhere," the right side of his lower back going numb after a fastball to Geoff Blum to end the third.
"It's the first time I've ever done that on the mound," Stephenson said. "He popped it up and I went to walk towards the dugout and I had a hard time lifting my legs.
"I knew I wasn't coming back
out because I couldn't breathe."
Catcher Mike DiFelice didn't know what to think.
"I got to the dugout and I thought he had he had appendicitis or something." DiFelice said.
Stephenson considers the injury just a bump in the road compared to his rehab from reconstructive elbow surgery on April 25, 2001.
He felt he had better velocity in his start on Sunday, even though he allowed two runs in three innings.
Baseball attendance dwindles, hits low
"We're not even a year yet," Stephenson said. "I'm thinking over the next couple of months that I'm going to get stronger and stronger."
The Associated Press
NEW YORK Many of baseball's gleaming new ballparks have a different sight this season: thousands of empty seats.
Blame it on losing teams and lousy weather.
In the first two weeks of the season, eight ballparks have drawn their lowest crowds for regularly scheduled games, including seven parks that were part of the new-ballpark boom.
Overall, the average attendance for a major league game was down 3.5 percent in the first two weeks of the season, to 29,403.
last year
"We've had a number of losing seasons in a row." Pittsburgh Pirates owner Kevin McClatchy said. "The fans just get tired of it, and I don't blame them."
Pittsburgh, coming off nine consecutive losing seasons, saw season tickets drop from 17,000 last year in its first season at PNC Park to 10,000 this year.
Florida, purchased by Jeffrey Loria from John Henry following a stagnant offseason, sold 4,000 season tickets, down from 6,000
Still, that's better than it was at the start of spring training, when only several hundred had been sold.
"We're pretty happy with where we got to," Marlins president David Samson said. "Our selling season didn't start until Feb. 16. Our focus was just on getting started, and having a full selling season for '03. We have no specific mandates for attendance goals for this season."
Florida, which hopes to get a new ballpark eventually, drew a record-low 4,466 to Pro Player Stadium on April 11. Other lows for regularly scheduled games include Detroit's Comerica Park (11,833), PNC Park (12,795), Milwaukee's Miller Park (14,090), Houston's Astros Field (21,528), Baltimore's Camden Yards (22,781), Cleveland's Jacobs Field (23,760) and Denver's Coors Field (29,522).
Milwaukee's season ticket sales dropped from about 14,000 to about 11,000 in the second season of Miller Park.
Brewers president Wendy Selig-Prieb, the daughter of commissioner Bud Selig. "To be able to match those numbers, particularly early on? Very, very difficult. Have we seen a lessening in our season ticket numbers? Yeah. But it's still the second-highest in team history."
"Last year was the inaugural year of a new ballpark," said
Still, it's a lot better than the old days.
"I looked back in 2000, which was the final year of County Stadium, in games two and three, we drew 7,000 fans," she said. "We need to remember that perspective."
A 3-10 start didn't help the Brewers, Detroit, in its third season at Comerica Park, began 0-11, the fifth-worst start in the maiors since 1900.
"We need to play better baseball," said Dave Dombrowski, who left the Marlins last year to become president of the Tigers. "We're in a large city, a great sports town. The passion is phenomenal. It's just we need to be in a position that people start to believe in us."
games in the northern part of the country during early April cold snaps.
But fans turn out for a winner no matter what the temperature. They worry whether the team is hot, not the ballpark.
Part of baseball's drop is due to several teams playing home
With the Rangers off to a 3-10 start. The Ballpark in Arlington has seen four crowds under 22,000 — the lowest since 1996.
Ticket sales dropped in Cleveland, where there were winter wonders about the Indians' success this season. Off to an 11-1 start, the Indians sold 60,000 single-game tickets during the first two weeks of April, raising their total for the season to 2.35 million. Last year, they drew 3.18 million.
Teams that don't win as much often resort to promotions. The Marlins opened a "fan conversion booth," where T-shirts and caps from other teams could be exchanged for Marlins T-shirts and caps.
The old memorabilia is donated by the Marlins to charities in the cities of the opposing teams.
Bonds sets records despite injured leg
The Associated Press
SAN DIEGO—Barry Bonds almost hit a homer, and he robbed the San Diego Padres of one.
Bonds played a pretty good game Monday night, a day after being forced out of the San Francisco Giants' lineup with a slightly strained right hamstring.
Bonds finished 1-for-3 with a single and an intentional walk in San Francisco's 4-3 loss, and he robbed D'Angelo Jimenez in the bottom of the eighth. The left fielder got back to the wall on Jimenez's fly ball, timed his jump and got his glove over the 8-foot, 2-inch fence to make the catch
"The leg only bothers me when I'm stealing bases," Bonds said. "It should feel better tomorrow."
Back in the lineup, Bonds struck out against Bobby Jones, ending the first inning, but not before exciting the fans when he missed a home run by about 15 feet. His long foul ball
reached the second deck in right field.
Bonds has hit 64 homers against the Padres, his highest total against any team. His 32 homers in Qualcomm Stadium are the most in any road ballpark.
When he set the single-season homer record last year with 73,11 came off the Padres. This year, one of his major league-leading seven homers was against San Diego.
After hitting in the indoor batting cage regular batting practice was canceled because of rain earlier Monday Bonds came out on the field an hour before the game and ran through some drills with trainer Stan Conte.
Bonds, who hit his 574th home run Saturday to move past Harmon Killebrew into sole possession of sixth place on the career list, was hurt in the third inning of Sunday's loss to Milwaukee. It's an injury he first sustained during the final week of spring training.