Have you looked at the reviews Angell's book received? I checked
amazon.com's website and there are some wonderful editorial reviews on
the book. Check it out. Just go to:

http://www.amazon.com

and do a search for "A Pitcher's Story." I can't post the direct link
because it's so long.
susan peters ~ [email protected]

Hi everybody!

Not that I want anyone to think I spend my time at work surfing the net
but...

Here's the scoop on David's pitching today:

3+ innings, 2 runs, 4 walks.

1st inning -- all the outs were on fly balls to the outfield.  NO RUNS
2nd inning -- all the outs were on ground balls to the infield.  NO RUNS
3rd inning -- first two outs were on grounders to the infield, then a walk,
a hit-batsman, and a single to score a run; the sixth batter struck out.
END RESULT = ONE RUN.
4th inning -- (this is painful) lead-off home run, followed by two walks,
and then he was lifted for a relief pitcher.  The reliever didn't allow
either of the inherited base runners to score.  END RESULT = ONE RUN.

Hope the next game is better.  (And for us Yankee fans...  Minnesota is now
leading the Twins 5-3.)

Sue

Ooops,  sorry for that last sentence.  I meant to say that Minnesota is
leading the Red Sox 5-3.  (I guess that shows I'm concentrating on work at
least a little bit!)

Sue

Sue!!!

Welcome back to court.. we've missed ya...

KC... sorry, I read on redsox.com just yesterday that the game was a 7:05
start!!!  So, now we've both missed it :(  I will try to get a bit on tape
from baseball tonight.  Since it wasn't the best outing I am kind of glad I
didn't tape it.

As for David's line maybe they took him out due to his pitch count.  I
believe they said he would only be throwing 75 pitches for today's game.

talk to you all later
Laura

http://www.geocities.com/coney36_nyy/

Hey Sue!  So glad to hear from you!  Thank you for the recap on the
game...I took a peek at it earlier and saw the news...probably not the
outing he was exactly looking for but when you broke it down by inning it
looked much better...his first two innings were strong, so that's good!  I
wonder if his next start will be against the Yankees?

Laura-- Too bad about missing the times, thanks for trying though!  :)

I will probably update the page tomorrow, just to let everyone know!

Take care~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
                   --KC :)

This is sort of after the fact, but it's a nice article -

Cone aims to reward Sox' faith
by Jeff Horrigan
Wednesday, May 16, 2001

MINNEAPOLIS - David Cone admitted that dire thoughts raced through his
mind when he had to remove himself from his third and final spring
training appearance on March 13, as well as in the days and weeks
immediately afterward.

Coming off the worst season of his career, dealing with an advanced
baseball age (38) and suddenly trying to cope with inexplicable
shoulder pain, the former American League Cy Young Award winner feared
the worst.

``When I broke down in spring training, it was probably as low as I've
been in a long time because I really expected to do well and make the
team and prove I could come back,'' Cone said yesterday before the Sox
beat the Twins, 5-2, in the opener of their three-game series at the
Metrodome. ``Once that happened, I wasn't sure what was going to
happen.''

After going an embarrassing 4-14 with a 6.91 ERA last season for the
New York Yankees, he wondered if he'd ever get the chance to avenge
himself.

``I was prepared for anything at that point,'' Cone said. ``I knew
they had a lot of depth here and a lot of pitchers. I didn't know
where I'd fit in or what their decision-making would be.''

Thus it came as a major surprise when the Red Sox phoned him after his
rehabilitation start at Single-A Sarasota on Saturday and told him
that he was being activated from the disabled list and immediately
added to the Boston starting rotation. After all, Cone had only thrown
48 pitches in the outing and expected to make at least one more rehab
start before a decision was made.

He expected his next appearance to be in the Florida State League, not
in the Metrodome tomorrow afternoon against the surprising Twins.

``Certainly I was a little surprised to get the call after my last
outing, but nevertheless, I'm excited and ready to go,'' Cone said.
``I didn't know what to expect from start to start, other than that
there would be re-evaluation after every start. I have better arm
strength than I have in a couple of years, so why waste the bullets
down there? They need to get me up here and find out what I can do.''

The Sox' reasoning became apparent almost immediately. By having Cone
start tomorrow, that would put him in line to make his second start
versus the Yankees at Yankee Stadium on May 23, and his following
start versus New York again at Fenway Park on May 28.

``I know they didn't want me making my first start versus the Yankees,
so (the activation) was either now or much later,'' Cone said.

``I'm happy with now.''

In some respects, the spring setback was just what he needed. Cone
used the down time to strengthen the shoulder and tinker with his
pitching mechanics. It resulted in an improved fastball (consistently
in the 89-91 MPH range over the weekend) and a pain-free delivery.

More than anything, however, it provided Cone with the peace of mind
that he was capable of proving that last season was a freakish anomaly
rather than the sad end of a glorious career.

``I really think that I'm throwing better now than I have in the past
couple of years,'' he said. ``Some of the breaking balls I've been
throwing have been better than I'd shown in a while.''

After making only one start for Sarasota and another in the extended
spring training camp, Cone is expected to be held to a pitch count of
65-70 tomorrow.

``(The Sox) have shown a lot of faith in me and now it's time for me
to return that faith,'' Cone said.
--------------

Also Yahoo has some pictures of David from today's outing:

http://search.news.yahoo.com/search/news_photos?p=david+cone
susan peters ~ [email protected]

here's an article from the Boston Globe recapping David's outing

Have a great day
Laura 
____________________________________________________________

The following story appeared in The Globe Online:
Headline: Radke gets best of Cone, Red Sox
Date:     5/18/2001
Byline:   By Gordon Edes, Globe Staff

"    MINNEAPOLIS - The Red Sox thought they were doing David Cone a
favor by arranging for him to make his Sox debut against somebody
besides the Yankees, knowing that his heart may still be stashed
somewhere in the Bronx."
____________________________________________________________

To read the entire story, click on the link below or cut and paste it
into a Web browser:
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/138/sports/Radke_gets_best_of_Cone_Red_Sox+.shtml
____________________________________________________________

This message was sent by laura naughton [mailto:[email protected]]
through Boston.com's email recommendation service. If you have questions
or comments about this free service, please email us at [email protected].

Torre sat in the first base dugout yesterday morning and looked at the
Red Sox-Twins score on the left-field fence. Torre knew David Cone was
pitching for the Red Sox and making his season debut after shoulder
problems.

"I can't pull for him but I can pull for him physically," Torre said
of his former pitcher. "I hope he is all right."

When Torre noticed the Twins had pulled to within 3-2, Torre said:
"Get him out of there so I can pull against [the Red Sox]."

Cone went three-plus innings, allowed two runs, two hits, walked four
and gave up a homer. He could start Wednesday night against the
Yankees at Yankee Stadium.
susan peters ~ [email protected]

By Jon Heyman
Minneapolis 
FOR ONCE with David Cone, the anticipation exceeded the
performance. Cone failed to show his usual flair for the dramatic in
his well-hyped Red Sox debut. Nor did he even exhibit all that much
feel for the strike zone, at least not umpire Marty Foster's version
of it, in his surprisingly brief initial outing for the historic yet
star-crossed Old Towne team.

Cone couldn't come anywhere close to matching that great comeback game
of his in September 1996, when he emerged after four months of
treatment for a potentially life-threatening aneurysm in his pitching
shoulder to no-hit the Oakland Athletics for seven innings. But then,
these days Cone is battling something far more debilitating to
pitchers.

Yes, middle age. Eventually, that's what gets them all, even the great
ones.

Yet, don't let Cone, 38, fool you. He still may have some tricks up
that right sleeve of his. Don't draw too many conclusions from the
results of this one three-plus-inning outing seven months removed from
his last meaningful pitch, the one that retired Mike Piazza in Game 4
of the Subway Series.

Don't assume he is almost done. That might be a major mistake.

In pitcher's lingo, Cone still needs to "fine-tune" a few things after
returning from shoulder soreness and Floridian rest. He needs to
regain control of his errant fastball, and he needs to build way more
stamina. But he showed he has something left in Boston's 5-3 defeat to
the Cinderella Twins yesterday under the Teflon-coated dome, maybe
plenty left.

Cone did things we have not seen from him in quite a while, good
things. He touched 90 on the radar gun three times, a figure Cone
could only dream of during last year's nightmare of a 4-14 season in
the Bronx. He snapped off breaking pitches that kept Twins hitters off
kilter, for a while, anyway.

Cone's linescore won't turn any heads, not with four walks and two
runs in three-plus innings, and his ball-to-strike ratio wasn't
something he'd like to recall, with 39 balls and just 37 strikes among
76 pitches. Yet, Twins personnel and scouts walked away impressed.
They spoke of pop they haven't seen in a while, and breaking pitches
with real bend in them. "He was throwing pretty hard, and he had good
sliders and splitters," Twins cleanup man Corey Koskie said. "The last
time we faced him, I don't think he topped 84." Cone just might throw
the Yankees a curve when he faces them Wednesday at Yankee Stadium in
a game that will inspire a hundred times more hype.

Cone, downcast afterward, indicated he wasn't thinking ahead. Not yet.

"I'm just trying to get my act together," Cone said modestly.

He threw harder and healthier, and he was thankful for that. But some
of his pitches were directionless. Cone's wife, Lynn, the real estate
agent, could tell you the three most important things in determining
the value of a property: location, location, location. With Cone's
job, it's the same. He got so few strikes with his fastball, he
practically abandoned it in his last couple of innings.

"I felt like I had pretty decent stuff. But I was a little
disappointed I couldn't spot the fastball better," Cone said.

The day started a lot better for him than it ended. Cone made it look
easy for two innings, and he took a 3-0 lead into the third, built
almost entirely by Manny Ramirez, who doubled and scored in the second
and hit a two-run bomb off Twins starter Brad Radke in the third. But
then Cone started to lose touch with the strike zone.

After two more quick outs, Cone walked Cristian Guzman, then hit Denny
Hocking with a pitch. Matt Lawton's looping single to rightfield was
the Twins' first hit, and it produced their first run. By that point,
there were signs he'd have trouble logging five innings with his
75-pitch limit.

"I'm really happy to be back here," said Cone, who received no
decision.

"But I was hoping today would go a little better. I was hoping to get
deeper into the game." As it happened, he didn't even get one out into
the fourth inning.

The .394-hitting Doug Mientkiewicz battled Cone through nine pitches
starting the fourth, six of them breaking balls, and he finally
whacked a loose backdoor slider off the folding seats above the
plastic rightfield wall for a home run. By now, Cone was showing real
fatigue. He walked Chad Allen and Jacque Jones, then walked of the
mound.

Still, scouts and field personnel liked what they saw. One National
League scout said Cone did what a lot of pitchers do when they've lost
some juice. He picked, and he nibbled. He didn't trust his fastball.

It's not 95 mph anymore, but it's better than he thinks.

"He pitched fine. It was a small strike zone for both teams. I was
glad to see it," Twins manager Tom Kelly said. "David works hard and
he's a very good competitor. He's good for the game." Kelly said
Foster's strike zone expanded later, and Cone joked that if that were
true, it's his fault for not pitching well enough to stay out there.

Radke stayed all afternoon, finishing off a complete-game six-hitter
to baseball's first seven-game winner. Radke (7-1) did not walk a
batter, so Foster's strike zone could not have bothered him. Only
Ramirez, now hitting .412, did.

It's not Cone's way to point fingers. "I have no complaints," he said.
"I need to do a better job of minimizing the pitch count." Twins fans
applauded politely when Cone left the game. Undoubtedly, they
appreciate this transplanted Midwesterner's class and guts over many
years.

Besides, they also know middle age eventually is a hurdle for us all.


susan peters ~ [email protected]

awwwww... what a classy guy our Joe is :)  

This whole thing "debut" to me has been bittersweet.


Laura

David Cone could have stayed with the Yankees, tried to make the team
in the spring. Or Cone could have retired, which is what most Yankee
fans wanted, made some kind of hero Yankee Stadium exit. He went with
the Red Sox instead, considered to be a form of baseball treason
around here. He is supposed to pitch at the Stadium on Wednesday night
in a Red Sox uniform. He should be cheered in that uniform.

"It was just a marvelous run," Cone says of his Yankee years in his
new book. "Nobody can take away from those years, regardless of what
happens to me from here on out. I want to go somewhere where I'm
needed, and there isn't a great need for me with the Yankees."

His decision, his baseball life. He came back because he did not want
to go out as a 4-14 pitcher on the best team in the world. He wanted
to go out doing more than getting that one curtain-call out against
Mike Piazza in the World Series. As usual, Cone made the best deal for
himself. In the end, he always did that. For all his talk about the
romance of New York and the Yankees and the uniform, all of that, he
was ready to go to the Orioles a few years ago. The Yankees came up
with the money and he stayed.

Now he is hanging on with the Red Sox. He finally started his
big-league season the other day against the Twins with three-plus
innings that were more good than bad despite some wildness at the
finish. Now he gets the Yankees. This is Cone's kind of action, of
course, the kind of great drama that always juiced him more than the
other guys, got him running hot and high on adrenaline. When he had
the arm for it, you would have put him up against anybody.


David Cone understands the clock is close to striking midnight.
Wednesday night we will get a good look, on the big stage, on how much
arm he has left. It has been the question for a while now with Cone.
But then he was always able to kid himself into thinking he had more
than he really did, sometimes going out there in a big game for the
Yankees when he had nothing at all, the way he did that year against
the Indians in the playoffs, the one time Torre's Yankees lost.

But Cone went out there. He stayed out there against the Mariners, too
long, in Game 5, way back in 1995 when Buck Showalter was the Yankee
manager and thought Cone was his best chance to get the team to the
second round. You know the rest of the legend by now, because it is
part of the permanent record with Torre's Yankees:

The no-hitter he nearly pitched when he came back from his aneurysm,
Game 3 against the Braves in the '96 Series when the Yankees were down
0-2, the perfect game against the Expos, the way he pitched in the '99
postseason, first against the Red Sox, then against the Braves, when
we first started to wonder if he was washed up.

He never trained enough, not the way Roger Clemens, a nut for fitness,
has his whole career. Cone learned how big leaguers are supposed to
act 97 or so he thought 97 from Keith Hernandez, one of his heroes, a
throwback whose idea of exercise between games was with a cigarette
and a beer. Maybe that caught up with Cone in the end. Maybe it all
did. Clemens looks as strong as ever at 38. Cone really does seem to
be hanging on to the seams of the  ball.

And he should be cheered if he pitches Wednesday, because he was as
much a Yankee when he was here as any of them, because these years
wouldn't have been the same without him, because they sure wouldn't
have won the first World Series without him. Because, in the gritty
parlance of sports, Cone left it all out there, on the mound he will
take in the bottom of the first Wednesday night in the uniform of the
Boston Red Sox.

susan peters ~ [email protected]

It's only Monday and I've been thinking about this coming Wednesdays start
all weekend!

Is anyone in NY going to this game?  With him pitching on a Wednesday
night.. that means I won't be able to see the game unless ESPN shows it on
one of their stations b/c ESPN has the mlb rights on Wednesdays. Perhaps
it's for the best.  I thought I would be prepared for this, (his first start
against my team) but I am not.

Thanks for posting the article Susan.. which paper did it come from?


Laura

Hey, Laura....I'm thinking about going to game.  I have tickets to see the Red
Sox in September, and also in July (when the play the Mets - my boyfriend is a
Mets fan, nothing I can do about it but compromise!!).  I can't be sure David
will be pitching for either of those games, so I'm thinking I should maybe go
Wednesday.  The last time I saw David pitch in the stadium (as a starter) was
that his last game in July, against the Mets.  I'm a die hard Yankee fan, but I
won't be able to root against David.  I'm just afraid that I'm going get thrown
out of my section if I go there rooting for David!!

Any one else in NY going????

Melanie

Melanie..

Have a good time.. well, as good of a time as you can.  It would be exciting
to see David either way.. so you should go to the game on Wednesday if you
can!! I read an article in the post on-line in which Joe Torre expresses his
feelings about facing David on Wednesday.  He doesn't want to face him!!
Joe is so classy!  I know how he feels.  Part of me wishes David did go to
the Muts.. at least I wouldn't have had to worry about facing him as the
opponent.

Funny you should mention those games in September...I actually might be
going too.  I just submitted $40.00 worth of raffle tickets!  Hopefully I
will be the lucky winner! Grand prize is: Round trip airfare for two to NY,
2 tickets to the Yankees/Red Sox game either the 7th or 8th, a broadway
show, an autograhped baseball by Andy and a picture taken with him!  wish me
luck :)  The drawing isn't until August 4th tho :(

Melanie.. when you go to those games bring your camera and take pictures for
us :)


Laura

Hey, I'll share a little secret with you guys that I discovered last month.
Yankee stadium holds back field level box seats and some club seats for each
game, in case any VIPs decide to go at the last minute.  They typically release
these seats the day before the game, around noon.  Sometimes they release them
two days before.  I've been checking this theory for each home game for the
last month.  For Wednesday's game there are field level box seats, near the
foul pole, still available.  I think they do this at Shea stadium too, so if
anyone can get to NY last minute, or is around here already, check out what
seats are available the day before the game....

I will definitely take pictures at any of the games I go.  I'm going to bring
my book and pray that I can get him to sign it.  I still don't know if I can go
Wednesday.  But if I can't make it, I'll watch on MSG and root for David.  I've
been a Yankee fan for over 20 years now, and in watching the last few years,
I've come to the conclusion that they have this knack for just staying in the
game enough to be close to the top in August, and then turning on the heat to
overtake first.  So I feel pretty comfortable rooting for David's first win
against them.  At this point, I doubth they'll sweep Boston, so why not let
their only win be from David?!?

Melanie

http://www.geocities.com/coney36_nyy/

Hey everyone!  Thank you Susan for sending the article...Melanie, I hope
you get to go to the game on Wed, I know if I lived in NY I would so be
there!  It upsets me that I can't be there, I'd really like to be there to
support David.  I haven't been to the bronxbomers forums in quite some
time, but from the sounds of it it's not really worth going to anyway...I
really hope the fans aren't so mean to him, but maybe I should because it
would probably fuel his fire even more...kind of like Keith Hernandez.  As
for it being on ESPN, well, it *is* a Wed night game, and it's the
Yankees-Red Sox rivalry, and it's extra-dramatic because of David's
situation...I don't see how ESPN can NOT air this game!  Hopefully I will
be able to get my cable by then so I can watch!

As for rooting for David and the Red Sox...well, most of you know I have
to root for David first and foremost, so I really, really want him to win,
even if he has to beat the Yankees...:(  Sorry! ;)

Laura-- I am so with you on the ATL trip...I'd love to go there and see
David pitch against Glavine!  That would be too cool!  Doubt I can go
though...

I did manage to update the site over the weekend...and 2001 pictures have
been added to the gallery!  Enjoy! :)

Take care everyone, and if any of you get to the game, have a great time!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
              --KC :)