Thursday, July 07, 2005
A positively presidential performance from our own Lincolnly-bearded starter, eh?
Since I've got to get up early tomorrow (later today) for a glorious morning of marsh mucking at The Internship, just some quick random bits from tonight's game.
-Awesome moment: Manny hits a double, and David Ortiz, who was on first, hauls ass to third base and stops there. There's some time after the play, I forget why, maybe a conference on the pitcher's mound. In any event the camera has time to focus on Manny at second, who is glaring at Ortiz and windmilling his arms like he thinks he's Dale Sveum and he's waving Ortiz home. Obviously Manny is jokingly pissed that Papi didn't hustle all the way and give Manny an RBI. After a minute of gesturing he makes an 'ah, screw this' dismissive wave and turns around. Ortiz, at third, is cracking up.
If it had been, say, Johnny Damon running from first, Manny would have probably had a reason to grumble. But Ortiz would have had a heart attack, been thrown out at the plate, or both, if he'd tried to stretch that run any further than he did. Everyone involved understood this, it was just Manny and Ortiz goofing like they always do, and it gave Don and Remy another excuse to break into giggles during the broadcast.
-Rod Barajas must hate Kameron Loe. First Loe hits Barajas in the hand with a pitch, then he crosses him up and Barajas has to scramble all over creation for the ball. After the second incident Barajas sort of half-stood in his crouch and glared at the mound, before giving a series of signs while still mostly standing, obviously furious with his pitcher.
He left the game next inning, probably with some pain in his hand, and Sandy Alomar Jr. came in. Sandy's chest protector is weird, it's blue padding down the middle with silver padding in strips down the sides, and it looks like some sort of mad body armor. Just because it's that sort of a night for Texas pitchers, he takes an uncontrollable pitch off the nads, but doesn't seem to be in any particular pain, probably because he was wearing a cup. Craig Monroe, take note.
-Don Orsillo: "Sometimes I just wake up at 3 am, sit up in bed, and say, 'The two-two!'" In case you didn't know, Don has certain phrases that he loves saying just because of the way they sound, and one of them is 'the two-two', as in, when a guy is batting with two balls and two strikes on him. He says it with immense relish and, every so often, he and Remy will take a childish glee in saying it over and over again for a bit.
-Mark Bellhorn strikes out on a fastball hanging over his belt, and I say, out loud, to no one in particular, "The levitating cow strike zone strikes again!" Because if most major league batters have a strike zone the size of a milkbottle, Bellhorn's is the size of the whole cow. And because he can't hit anything high, it's a levitating cow. Honestly, this made sense at some point.
-I read in a parody article on The Brushback that Keith Foulke had 'pitched for the cycle', allowing a single, double, triple, and homerun all in one game. Har de har har, I thought. What a silly idea. Then I had a look at the boxscore for Saturday's game. He was a homerun short of pitching for the cycle, in one inning, with a walk and a HBP thrown in there for extra seasoning, and the game-winning walkoff RBI single for shits and giggles. Humor: it hurts when it is so close to home.
Also, I guess he's getting arthroscopic knee surgery and will be out for the rest of eternity or something fun like that. I know we're supposed to respect guys who play through pain for the Good of the Team, but if he was seriously hurting for most of the season I wish he would've just said something so that he wouldn't have blown so many goddamn games for us and we could've made a move earlier.
Maybe made a harder press for Ugueth Urbina when he was on the market. Maybe brought Cla Meredith back up for another go at it. Something other than this weird stagnation where we didn't have a real closer but couldn't really go get one because, er, well, there was a guy on the roster who was, nominally, the closer.
-Curt Schilling to the bullpen. I had assumed that this was temporary, until he gets back in the groove of scaring the pants off of opposing batters (if only this were actually true. I'd look forward to Tigers/Red Sox matchups so much more... just think, all those pantsless Tigers!) and not rolling his ankle everywhichway. But now people are saying it's more permanent? Wha?
Of course it remains to be seen how Curt will take to life on the ragged edge of disaster (aka life in the bullpen), but I still think we'll need a real closer at some point. Right? I mean... right?
-Laynce Nix is pretty hot. We've reached an agreement ('we' being me, Amy, and Beth) that he looks very much like a cheap imitation Gabe Kapler... hot along similar lines, only less so. Because let's face it, not many can hold a candle to Gave Kapler.
-I finally cracked and got Aces, which I'm slowly flipping through while at the same time re-devouring the fifth Harry Potter in anticipation of the new one. It (Aces) is already quite good, even though I'm not terribly far in yet.
Tim Hudson on being listed at 6'1: "Must've been wearin' them stripper heels the day they took that measurement." Which conjures up a mental image that fills me a deep, mellow happiness. Tim Hudson in stripper heels. God bless the powers of imagination.
Mark Mulder on Eric Chavez claiming he was going to be more 'badass' in the 2004 season: "He said 'badass'?... that's pretty funny. Chavvy's about as badass as a kitten." Which is funny because Mulder is about as badass as a tiny wee suckling baby kitten, despite his height and his occasional pitching prowess. Whatever, dude. You went to Michigan State. You lose at life.
Barry Zito on his Cy Young: "I was so honored and humbled and proud and stoked and all that to win it." Stoked? People actually say that? Sheez. Later in the same chapter he's talking about how Huddy had been getting screwed by pitching well but not getting run support and thus not getting wins, and how this was interefering with his chances at a Cy Young, and he referred to the unfortunate situation as "a total chafe," which is also something I did not know people actually said in, you know, real life.
-In closing (ah ha ha ha ha, BAD pun), the Boston Globe has seen fit to create a photo gallery of Keith Foulke's fuck-ups, which is hilarious in ways my tired brain cannot even begin to contemplate. The fact that a major newspaper will make a photo gallery of the various occasions on which the baseball team's closer has screwed the team over, so that the readers may view it and laugh/weep, is just so... so Boston.
2:24 AM
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