Sunday, October 12, 2008
CATDAMMIT, TIMLIN. Why do you hate me? Why do you want me to suffer? I have never done anything to you.
I know there are many other things to blame here, including:
--Whatever Is Wrong With Josh Beckett Oh Jeez I Bet It's the Oblique Even If He Says It Isn't
--the homeplate ump and his terrible strikezone
--the throw from Drew that was awkward and offline
--Tito for leaving Beckett in so long
--every stupid feature of Tropicana Indoor Skatepark
--Jacoby's 0-for-6 night
--Mark Kotsay's 0-for-6 night
--cowbells
--Evan Longoria and everything associated with Evan Longoria
--the removal of the word 'Devil' from the Rays' name
--BJ Upton
--MLB's scheduling, which has playoff games starting after 8 pm
--the TBS announcing crew
--Joe Maddon's black magick and sorcery
--men left on base
--Javier Lopez
--the rays in the outfield touch-tank.
But because it is nearly 3 am and I am irrational with woe: CATDAMMIT MIKE TIMLIN WHY MUST YOU WOUND ME SO?!
I know that Timlin used to be a good pitcher. I know that those days are not too long gone. Why, he was downright GOOD last season.
Those times are gone forever. Mike Timlin is 42 years old. Those times are not coming back. We are collectively in a place right now where we see Timlin come into a game and we say, "Oh shit no we're doomed now," and most of the time we do that, we end up being right. Red Sox fans are naturally paranoid and pessimistic but this is not OK. We don't like being right when it's the result of our paranoia and pessimism coming to actual fruition.
With that in mind: why did Timlin come into that game? Why would you bring a ticking timebomb who doesn't even have the powers of his formerly high socks to raise him above the muddy waters of mediocrity anymore? Why would you do that in the bottom of the 11th inning of a vital ALCS game? Why do that when Papelbon had only thrown 18 pitches and had at least one night off immediately following the game?
First the first Wolverine loss to the MAC team in school history, on a frikking missed field goal, and then THIS. My frowny faces shall be epic this weekend.Labels: ALCS, baseball, Devil Rays, loss, Mike Timlin, MLB, Red Sox
2:30 AM
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
So, it's been a few days, and I think I've mostly recovered from Monday's game. Directly after it my ability to think was limited to things like "David Ortiz=happy tiny kittens" and "I am going to be so sunburnt tomorrow". Both of these things are still true today.
You know, having been rained out the day before and being determined to get my money's worth out of the goddamn T, I decided it would be a good idea to meet up with Friend Annette at the park right when the doors opened so we could watch BP. Of course, nearing the end of the 12th inning, something like 7 hours later, this no longer seemed like such a great idea.
The other unintended consequence of coming in early was the life of my camera batteries. I always have two sets with me, and I usually run them both down in the course of a game, but with enough to spare on the last set, so I can flip through them if I want, and download them into my computer on the same batteries.
As the game went into extras, I started nursing the batteries. Turning the camera off. Ignoring Phillies players. I didn't really have a feeling that something special was gonna happen or anything, but it just seemed, well, prudent, you know? We have David Ortiz. Unlikely as it seemed (when he came up in the 12th I said, shaking, to Annette, "He can't, right? I mean, there's no way, right?"), you just never know.
I'm really glad I nursed the batteries along. You've gotta click especially that first one for big, by the way... Alex Cora snugglehugging Papi in the middle of the happy little group is the best bit.
All of the photos are right here and I would recommend going to see them, but because I know some of you are LAZY SODS, here are a few.
David Ortiz scoring the first run of the game past Chris Coste's attempted tag. This was the run that got the Officially Mad Crazy 6th Inning started. The inning where the Sox batted around and 3 guys batted twice (Ortiz, Manny, and Trot).
This game, by the by, ended up being a pain in the coccyx for people scoring the game. Not only did it go into extras, causing me to dig into the designated AB, R, H, and RBI columns, but because both teams batted around once I had to scratch out and change the inning numbers too. Still, it woulda been fun if only the Sox had done it.
I have no idea what Manny and Gonzo are doing here. I mean, they're waiting out a pitching change, I know that much, but beyond that.... no, I won't even speculate. That could be heading into dangerous waters.
It's pretty much impossible to hate Jimmy Rollins, right? I mean, how can you fail to love that?
One of the best things about my cousins' seats (the ones I, obviously, had for this game-- a thousand thanks cousin Beth!) is that you're seated so as to have a good view into, and therefore a good shot at, the Red Sox dugout. And you get to see things like this.
We all know Curt and Beckett have been inseparable this season, standing together on the dugout rail at every game when neither is pitching, chatting the game away. We all know that Curt is taking this opportunity to share his vast and no doubt long-winded wisdom with the kiddies very, very seriously, and very, very happily. He's probably the kinda guy who leaps at the chance to talk to (at?) a captive audience.
This particular conversation, the one I have photographed, went on for several innings, with Annette and I checking back every so often to say, "They're not still talking, are they? Who's Curt bugging now?"
Perhaps it was the heat, perhaps it's the scuzzy facial hair, but whatever it was, Beckett looked like a goddamn mess. He seemed zoned out most of the time, too... I have other photos, that I didn't upload, where he's sitting elsewhere in the dugout, also staring vacantly into space and possibly trying to see if he could feel the individual bristles of his beard grow. With Curt talking and talking and talking and talking, it seemed for the first time, so far as I could tell, that Beckett was not listening. At all.
Jon Lester, on the other hand, was gazing at Curt the entire time with a look that I can only really describe as 'awestruck". He seemed unable to tear himself away. At one point in the 'conversation' Curt started pointing across the field, indicating something. Beckett turned his head in a half-hearted kind of way, but Lester didn't even look up. He could not take his eyes off of Curt for one moment, lest Curt in that moment drop some priceless pearl of wisdom that he would regret not picking up for the rest of his life, or something.
It was great.
Anyways. Things that are pretty:
Gabe Kapler. Pinch hit for Trotter in the 9th.
Mr. Varitek. Pinch hit for Dougie in the 10th, although, as Annette pointed out at the time, Tito was obviously trying his hardest to give Tek a whole day off.
Things you don't notice at the ballpark, but learn upon getting home and perusing your photos of the day's event:
1. Aaron Rowand thinks he's a college frat boy.
Everyone wears the armbands. Most guys have either blank ones, or bands with their number and the logo of whatever sportswear company makes them embroidered on. But Rowand here has his own special pair. When I loaded the photo in I thought, "Hmm, he's got an awful lot of writing on those armbands, I wonder what they say." Zoom proved the horrifying truth.
Yes. Aaron Rowand is wearing armbands that say "BEER PONG CHAMP" on them. Which is not only the sort of absurd, vaguely distasteful and classless yet utterly hilarious sort of thing I would normally expect from AJ Pierzynski, it is also a load of wank. Everyone knows that it was a pair of Wolverines who won the World Series of Beer Pong. Our finest moment, indeed.
But really now, Aaron. You have a Baseball World Series ring. Stop pretending that you have any sort of claim to a Beer Pong ring as well.
2. Mike Timlin has finally gone off the deep end.
We all know he's a hunter and he has a strange, almost manic love affair with the camo pattern. Camo Red Sox hats, clever. Camo shirts under his jersey, acceptable.
But a camo baseball glove? MIKE TIMLIN YOU CRAZY. I didn't even know they made such a thing.
What's next? He paints his face camo and claims it's some new application of eyeblack? See, I shouldn't even have said that, now someone's going to get Ideas.
So yeah, I do recommend checking out the rest of 'em, because there are plenty more and the only reason I don't post them here is I don't want to bust anyone's weakling computer or anything.
That was the second David Ortiz walkoff I've seen live (I saw his afternoon walkoff blast last summer), and man, they just don't stop being awesome.Labels: Aaron Rowand, baseball, David Ortiz, extra innings, in attendance, Mike Timlin, MLB, photoblog, Red Sox
4:20 AM
Monday, April 24, 2006
Not dead! Honest! It's just that move-out is scant few days away (not to mention the final, and my last outing to the prison), and I deal with almost nothing so poorly as I do move-out and move-in. The worst times of the year here in BCRS land are move-out and move-in. I am not good with transitory periods.
I also haven't been seeing much in the way of Red Sox lately. Indeed, the closest I came was that game on I think the 21st, where Papi, Manny (finally!), and Tek all homered, and we STILL CONSPIRED TO LOSE, because Mike Timlin COULDN'T HOLD ONTO HIS GODDAMN BALLS (he's got 3, you know) and he MADE LIKE A BOMB AND EXPLODED.
What happened was that I was watching the Cubs/Cardinals game, idly waiting for the first David Eckstein=scrappy reference of the day, when who should phone but Beth, rambling excitedly about Manny and Papi hugging, or something, and homeruns, or something, and she's at the house of someone named Julia, and they have TiVO which is like the shining Holy Grail of electronics, or something, and OH MY GOD WHAT IS MIKE TIMLIN DOING.
Oh look, I thought idly to myself. Michael Barrett is beating himself up over letting that ball get by him. Ho hum. Wait. Timlin? What?
I fired up Gameday, which is slow as the molasses that once consumed Boston (100% of FACT!) but still better than nothing, and I stared in horror at the little graphics as Mike Timlin slowly but surely imploded before our very eyes like a timelapse video of an apple rotting down to a wizened little brownish core.
"There's nobody warming," Beth hyperventilated. "WHY DON'T THEY HAVE ANYONE WARMING HE'S ALREADY GIVEN UP A HOMERUN."
"Um." I eloquently replied. There's nothing quite like knowing apocalyptic baseball is going on right down the phoneline from you, but you can't see it. I checked the boxscore of the previous game. Wake had gone 8 innings, Tavarez had sucked copious polluted wind for a whole 0 outs, and Foulke had come in to put a quick end to the misery. So the bullpen should have been, if not well-rested, at least not decimated. "I dunno" was about all I could offer Beth, who by now sounded as though she was thrashing about in an epic battle with the Giant Squid of Exquisite Agony, from what I could tell over the phone.
Eventually the phone got handed off to Julia Whose House They Were At, and I rambled incoherently at her for a bit (hi Julia! I had a crippling cold and hadn't slept in like 2 days!), and then Beth took the phone back and said I was not allowed to make fun of her for Keith Foulke anymore because of the "flipbook" of photos I had taken of Brandon Inge on Opening Day. To which I respond: whatever, madam. Our seats were situated so that we HAD to be looking at Mr. Inge all game long. And he's cuter than Foulke. And has knees. And actually likes baseball. ("Oh, so that's how it is!" Beth responded to that last) Plus he wears high socks. Are you all with me, people?
So I'm pleased to note that we won today (yesterday), that Papi is getting into full-on "fear my jovial wrath" mode, that Youks is still hitting pretty darn well, that Clement got a nice little ego-boosting win despite not pitching spectacularly, that Papelbon continues to Save, making the pressure on him to not blow one just that much more ridiculously strong.
And can we talk about his mohawk for just a second? As near as I can tell, he reached a certain number of saves, and this somehow meant he lost a bet with Youks, and thus had to have the mohawk, um, created. Does that not seem to fishy to anyone else? He WON the bet by performing up to a certain level, and his reward is letting Kevin Youkilis, who LOST the bet by not performing up to whatever level they had set for him (a certain number of homers etc. I think), do whatever he wishes to his (Papelbon's) hair. In what Bizarro universe does that make sense?
The moral of the story, I'm pretty certain, is just to not bet with Kevin Youkilis, ever.
So, the schedule as it stands right now. Wood studio, packing, studying, panicking, and last day of teaching at the prison on Monday. Lunch with next year's roommate, shipping of several boxes, packing, studying, and panicking Tuesday. Biospsych final and probably all-nighter of packing Wednesday. Move-out on Thursday. Chilling in Southfield and nighttime Tigers game on Friday. Drive back to MA on Saturday. Attain coma-like state on Sunday. And then I'm back in the land of WEEI and NESN, and you'll all have to suffer a more oft-updated blog.Labels: baseball, Mike Timlin, MLB, rant, terrible
4:34 AM
Saturday, March 25, 2006
The Boston Globe has posted an article about Mike Timlin which has struck Red Sox fans dead from pure amazement and amusement and awe and, I do think, a healthy little pinch of sheer terror. Kristen, Beth, and Red all got to it before me, but I can't just pass it by. Let me summarize it for you, although you really, really REALLY need to go read the whole thing.
-Mike Timlin, Tim Wakefield, and Matt Ginter go hunting for wild pigs.
-Timlin talks very very seriously about bows and hunting and the Globe photographer wees in his pants a little from the intensity of it all.
-Timlin shoots a feral pig with a giant fucking arrow fired from a giant fucking bow.
-And I quote:
The sow starts screaming from the brush. Loudly.
''She's not having a good day," Timlin says.
The pitcher's still whispering, but he's exhilarated and full of adrenaline.
"...She finally moved away a little bit and I drilled her. See the arrow down there. Still stuck in the sand. It's good blood. It goes right through them. Probably right above the heart. She ran about 40 yards over there. There's two pine trees. It broke her left front leg. I shot her on the right side, it went through and broke her left shoulder. She screamed for a little bit but she's probably done now. She gave a serious death squeal. She's kicking and then all of a sudden, wheeeh, and then stop."
-They go back to camp. Neither Wake nor Ginter has killed anything, though Wake saw some deer and Ginter saw a bobcat.
-Trot Nixon text messages Timlin (!!!!!) wanting to know if he's killed anything.
- Timlin remembers a special takeout request.
''David Wells asked me to bring him back some for breakfast," he says. ''And I'd like to get some sausages made up in Fort Myers. That sounds good."
- Red Sox Nation collectively says "...." and then screams and hides under the covers.
MIKE TIMLIN KILLS A GIANT WILD PIG AND TALKS EXCITEDLY ABOUT ITS DEATH SCREAMS.
I don't think I can say HOLY FREAKING CATS enough about this article. Seriously. Mike Timlin is a HARBRINGER OF AGONY AND BLOODY DEATH, and I don't mean that in the figurative 'rarr tough relief pitcher' sense, I mean that LITERALLY.
I can think of exactly one pitcher who matches up to this, and that's Ugueth Urbina, who allegedly attacked some of his workers with a machete and then set fire to them.
Also, say hello to this dude. Hee Seop Choi is now a member of the Red Sox, claimed off waivers, which is extraordinarily weird because he did (and does) have minor league options left.
Anyways. Things have been a bit mad around here lately, what with the semester ending and shows opening (two in about two months, that's a bloody lot of work to get ready and submit rightquick) and teaching in prisons, and the partner for the prison class deciding to not show up for things anymore including the actual prison workshop, leaving me to drive the hour to Jackson and to conduct the class of prisoners entirely by myself... but I won't talk about that class, I won't, because I could go on forever, and ALL I WANT TO DO IS SEE SOME BASEBALL DAMMIT.
Which, weather and workload permitting, I might get to do later this weekend.
In the meantime let me just shuttle you around to some things that you should be looking at because they are, pretty much, awesome.
Jere has a wicked good post about why we're so upset about the Bronson trade and why this makes sense even though we, one of the most informed fan bases in baseball, know in our forebrains that it's not the worst or craziest trade ever. It's in our backbrains that we react poorly to it. I like Jere's take on it and you should read it and feel better about eating that entire pint of ice cream while dabbing at your face with tissues over the fate of a guy you've never even met.
Side note on the informed fan thing: I'm overgeneralizing, of course. There are dumb, dumb, dumber-than-the-dirt-on-the-cleats-of-Johnny-Damon Red Sox fans out there. And there are, obviously, very very smart and informed fans of pretty much every team out there (behold my mighty linkbar; some of 'em are over there). What I'm saying is that while there may be small or even medium-sized pockets of dedicated fans for most teams, the Red Sox have ridiculously huge numbers of ridiculously informed fans, half of whom can and at a moment's notice will gleefully crunch as many stats as you like. We also have a huge number of idiots following the team, but at least we're balanced.
Actually, this is a chicken-and-egg kind of question for me, a fan who's too young to have seen it start out: which came first, the crazed fan base demanding the massive amounts of information, or the extensive media coverage creating the super-informed fans? Someone get on this.
As a fellow Red Sox/Tigers fan, Cat is quick to compare the hollow-thud-in-your-chest sensation of this trade to the midseason Farnsworth trade last year, reminding us all that we are not alone in our irrational pain. Or reminding just me, then.
Andrew asks you to vote in the Arquimendez Pozo Award poll for the best WBC name. Great fun. Pool B, by the way, should be and is (as of this moment) a complete runaway victory for Stubby Clapp.
Evan writes a ridiculously thorough little report on pitchers and injury, which can be found in two parts, Part I and Part II. He talks to Jon(athan) Papelbon's baby brother! He talks to Will Carroll! It's good stuff. Go, read, git your education on.
If you haven't yet heard about the Michigan blog vs. ESPN talk radio SUPER BIG INTERNET CONTROVERSY, I figure MGoBlog's coverage is as good a place as ever to find out. The moral of the story is, Michigan bloggers write funny things, and ESPN talking voiceboxes are too stupid and belligerent to acknowledge the fact that, oh yes, by the way, they blatantly stole their last segment from said blog.
Batgirl shows that Lew Ford, to complete his image of dorkitude, has a marvelous Spring Training farmer's tan. His upper arms look whiter than me, and I'm painfully white.
The Brushback has the answer for why the Sox have been trading like mad lately. It makes so much sense, it must be true.
Tommy LaSorda throws the controversial WBC umpire under the bus All subtle-like, though! Quoth the Dodger sage:
I do not want the fans in Japan, or in Mexico, to think that these calls were made because the umpire is American. The umpire that made those calls has had a reputation for many years of being controversial. In fact, he has created controversy for many American teams, and managers, including me.
Also, look everyone! It's Beauty and the Beast!
Hopefully I'll have Real Live Baseball to post about shortly. Until then, have a good weekend, and check this stuff out or you're just as bad as Matt Millen, and it'll only be a matter of time before we're burning you in effigy in the streets.Labels: baseball, hunting, Mike Timlin, MLB, random, Red Sox
2:31 AM
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