Monday, July 31, 2006
Game 1: Rally Monkey invades Boston, spreads ebola among populace, laughs evilly.
Game 2: David Ortiz miraculously cures ebola using nothing but his mango salsa recipe and the advanced enzymes in his own saliva.
Game 3: Rally Monkey has radioactive Boston Harbor water dripped onto it, mutates into horrible hairy behemoth, terrorizes city anew.
No need to say more, I reckon.
Strange things are afoot. We picked up Bryan Corey for Luis Mendoza, and Corey is intriguing in the sense that he stands a reasonable-to-good chance of being less exciting than Julian Tavarez and/or Rudy Seanez, where 'exciting' means 'likely to induce cardiac events'. Mendoza had been riding a low level of suck with the SeaDogs, so whatever. To put Corey on the 40-man they had to move Clement to the 60-day DL, a move we can all live with, since half of you have no memory of who Matt Clement is anymore beyond the lingering salty tang of his nervous tears.
Trot somehow managed to hurt his arm by swinging too hard at a baseball. He missed too, just to add to the indignity of the whole thing. Suddenly Wily Mo is looking like less of a trade chip and more of a huge guy with pointy facial hair who'll be seeing some quality plate time in the near future, unless of course he's a trade chip to get us someone who can fill that niche even better. I mostly hate this injury because it's so freaking stupid and so typically Trot; instead of landing funny on his shoulder and popping it out of the joint or getting hit in the nuts with a pitch, he has to go and pull a muscle by swinging like some kind of uncontrolled greenie-addled nut. Awesome.
The Yankees picked up Bobby Abreu for what is basically the baseball equivalent of a frozen bag of snow peas. The Phillies, because apparently salary-dumping Abreu was just a gateway drug to further insanity, threw in Cory Lidle too. I don't understand how this happened. The last rumor I had seen was that the Yanks were going to send Melky Cabrera or something to Philly for Abreu, not the variety pack of minor league wastewater.
Strange things, like I said. Let us not dwell upon them. Let us instead dwell upon that joker up there at the top. His name is Bryan Morse and he's a left-handed starting pitcher with a tendency towards sidearming. Or, at least, he's a starter now, for the North Shore Spirit. When he was drafted by the Marlins, he pretty much only relieved in their minors. He pitches with his mouth open and his tongue lolling out. He's 27 years old now so this is probably about as good as it gets, but he's had flashes of brilliance; today, for instance, or the time in high school that he pitched a no-hitter. And he's a lefty, so you never know when someone might decide he's worth taking a flyer on and bringing him up.
He threw 7.2 innings of perfect ball on Sunday, retiring the first 23 batters in a row before Québec Capitales catcher Olivier Lepine singled in the 8th inning. Morse went on to complete the game for a 3-hit shutout of les Capitales. For a while there I thought I was going to get to see my first perfect game in person, although my dad, ever helpful, kept saying things like, "That's 12 in a row now!" and "Wow, he's 6 innings through it now!"
Yes, I finally, after rainouts and vacations and much rescheduling, hauled myself down to Fraser Field to take in a Spirit game. I had not been there since it was the Mad Dogs' park, and it is indeed much improved. We sat in the first row ($12 tickets! Thank you independent league baseball) just to the right of directly behind homeplate. Great view, especially for a game that's all about the pitching, as this one was. I was initially concerned about the net being so close to our faces, but it turns out I could pretty much shoot straight through the netting with the teleconversion lens on, and it wasn't much of an issue.
Photos from the game can be found here. It's a pretty good photoset for the same reason a lot of the college ones came out well... you can get right up close to the action and the players. Plus it was a day game, so the light was good.
David Wells starts tomorrow (today). I expect him to get rocked, because it's his first game back in a Galapagos tortoise's age, and he'll probably be rusty as all get out. The Indians may be stuck behind some serious winning percentage in the AL Central, but they can hit if they get it in their minds to do so. Who knows, maybe if everyone in New England eats a cupcake at work in solidarity, he'll somehow pitch beautifully.Labels: Angels, baseball, Bryan Morse, in attendance, independent league, MLB, North Shore Spirit, random, Red Sox
5:36 AM
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