Saturday, August 13, 2005
No such thing as clutch hitting and blabbity blah blah, I know, but damn if David Ortiz just doesn't seem to come through when we need him to. The team sitting on top of the AL East has a DH batting under .300... in fact, he's only 3 for his last 20 at-bats. Insane, right? But I swear, that has to be the loudest sub-.300 batting average in the big leagues. But, man. From just watching the games you'd think he was hitting .400, and that's what it feels like.
If anyone even breathes the words 'underperforming' or 'replace' with regards to Big Papi I will rip their heads off and I will find some really hungry wild wolverines and I will feed them the offending heads and then I will have them vomit the resultant partially-digested material in the middle of East Lansing where it will be promptly set fire to by Michigan State students and then the ashes will be mixed into a keg and these will be consumed by the Michigan State football team at their annual couch-burning party and then they will vomit them back up.
That is how crazy you would be to suggest that David Ortiz has been anything but awesome for this team. You would be so crazy that you would have to destined to end up as headless-wolverine-eaten-regurgitated-burnt-drunk-reregurgitated goo, there would simply be no other place for you in the world.
Anyways.
Kevin Millar, man! What's wrong with hiim? He's seeing the ball OK, because he's still taking quite a few walks. His pure power isn't gone, because he's still hitting the ball really hard a couple of times in each at-bat. But he just cannot. hit. the goddamn. ball. straight. It is starting to become foolish, the number of balls he has hit for incredible towering foul homeruns. Is this a bat speed thing? Is he catching balls too late or too early and pulling them too hard so that they don't fly straight out? Or does he just have the worst luck ever?
Either way, it's frustrating to watch and is starting to become painful.
Curt Schilling: YEEEEEARGH. I think my eyes melted out of my head, all atomic-bomb style, watching him give up those massive blasts. No, Curt. Just, no. You are not Jose "Homeruntastic" Lima. You are not Keith "I give up homeruns in the 9th to make the girls cry" Foulke. Your knee is not made of ground beef. Please do not start pitching like it.
I wasn't watching the game today all that closely, since I was doing layout work at the time, because I'd spent all day doing woodblock carving. Don't even ask. It's really nice to realize you can go 3 or 4 years without once picking up a chuck and then when you get it back in the palm of your hand you can still do mad crazy art things with it, that's all that needs to be said about that.
I'm in a linking kind of mood, so!
Imaginary baseball world! Wherein Beth and Kristen lose their minds and we get to reap the benefits. They definitely cleaned this up quite a bit from the conversations I've had with them. There's a lot more "what we do with the players in a hanging out sense" and a lot less "molestation". Way to water it down for the general public, ladies.
Idiots Write About Sports takes on the massive power of Rafael Palmeiro's raging erection. I don't even know why, but this brought tears of hilarity to my eyes. I do not even know why! At heart, I am but a puerile 12 year old. This entry about Bobby Kielty dressing up as Ronald McDonald for no readily available reason is also one of the best things I've read about baseball this week. Possibly this month.
Avoiding beers with Boomer. Apparently Mark Buehrle learnt all he knows of pitching from his ol' mentor David Wells. But he feared the prospect of coming to town, because Wells would probably want to go out. And poor Marky, he knows he cannot keep up with the mighty iron liver of Boomer. Hee. I love how his drinking prowess is such that it strikes fear in the hearts of even those who know him well, not just us idle internetly speculators.
Just Hanley being Hanley. What is it with being a Boston superstar, having issues with the media, and having the last name 'Ramirez'?
On Perception, Momentum, and Resultant Idiocy. Mgoblog goes off on a beautiful rant about human nature and biological imperatives and how this applies to our opinions of sports players/teams, and the upshot of it all is that Troy Smith still sucks. I was stunned by its beauty.
Harrington goes 9-for-9 in two drives but offense stalls. OK, at least Joey put in a good showing. We lost but hey, preaseason, right? It's still early, best to stick with what you know, and if what the Lions know is losing, so be it. For now. Save the wins for the regular season! All is good and happy and fluffy and Honolulu Blue and Silver. But wait, what?
Fullback Cory Schlesinger broke his right fibula early in the first quarter of Friday night's 10-3 loss to the New York Jets at the Meadowlands. He will be out for six to eight weeks, coach Steve Mariucci said.
Aaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh.
Meanwhile, Lions Den seems to have misplaced his pants, although what this has to do with his game analysis, I am unsure. Nice of him to let us know, though.
Jays 12, O's 0. Sorry, man. I know they're division rivals, and I know they were sitting atop the division for a while this season. But man oh man, how the mighty have fallen. The Tigers are busy sucking as much as it is possible for a team to suck right now so yeah, sympathy for our Halloween-color-clad brethren in baseball fandom. At least you get to look at the prettiness that is a healthy Javy Lopez again, right?
Really, Tigers, sucking. First, everything goes to hell in a natty tiger-striped handbasket. Then, Pudge goes AWOL. Then, I start crying and screaming, "Why?!? Why me, why, why anyone, why me??!" all Nancy-Kerrigan style.
Remember, many moons ago, when the Singapore Sox Fan had all those links to the fake player livejournals? We all know how I fear livejournal (deeply), but those were funny.
Anyways, I still pop on over to check out The Farns every so often, and it still cracks me up. I also usually have a look to see what Brett Tomko is saying, because it is dead hilarious.
Also, the guy is an artist in, like, real life. Seriously. He does all these creepy pencil renderings of his teammates for team charity auctions and things. They're not bad in a 'he's probably been drawing for a while but is making the sort of proportion errors that let you know he's never taken a life drawing class in his life' kind of way. Like, OK, here, he drew this one of Barry Bonds.
Pretty obviously drawn from a photograph. It's not a great or probably representative shot of the drawing, obviously, but you can still tell that Tomko's ignoring proper fabric flow in the pantlegs, and that he went overboard in the shading on the face. Also, this is just a general tip for everyone, but floating orbs don't make a great background unless the atmosphere you're trying to convey is 'alien abduction'.
Still, Major League baseball player doing art. I love him for it.
That got tangential, huh?
Pirates' miscue short-circuits opener. The Pirates lost. So what, right? Well, Zach Duke was pitching, and we all know how I covet Zach Duke. He finally had a bad outing, only going something like 4 innings. Well, every sports magazine and website in the land suddenly noticed him and decided to write articles about it, it was inevitable that this would happen. He wasn't the pitcher of record, though, so he still has yet to record a loss. Yay!
It wouldn't be links without a Dugout link!
[Johnny Damon] started talking to me, and I swear to God it was so unintelligible that I began traveling backwards in time. One day I will meet the dude (or dudette) who is writing these Dugout things. And I will hug them. A lot.
3:48 AM
|
|
