Mephistophiles is in the house. These next two games are going to be old school baseball, two pitching matchups that warrant national attention. Today, Fausto Carmona continues to benefit from signing his name in that little red book against one of God's good guys, Aaron Harang.
The world sure looks different when the Reds are winning!
Ha! welche Wonne fließt in diesem Blick
Auf einmal mir durch alle meine Sinnen!
Ich fühle junges, heil'ges Lebensglück
Neuglühend mir durch Nerv' und Adern rinnen.
(Ah! at this spectacle through every sense,
What sudden ecstasy of joy is flowing!
I feel new rapture, hallow'd and intense,
Through every nerve and vein with ardour glowing.)
One way to get to Fausto is by walking. Dude's K/BB ratio is 18/35. (Contrast that with Harang's 51/15.) If the Reds will stop swinging at the first pitch and work some counts today, we can get some baserunners. (That's a big IF.) And check this out: his WHIP? 1.644! (Harang's is a cool 1.123.) One has to wonder how Fausto can keep up the winning at that rate. (I'm telling you, devil's work it is.)
It's time to fight the poodle! Go Harang! Go Reds!
Jay Bruce update: After going 0-3 in game one and 2-3 in game 2 last night, Bruce is batting .364/.395/.669 with 9 homers, 5 triples, 9 doubles, 35 RBI, and 8 stolen bases. BRING UP BRUCE!!!
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Commentary on baseball and society, baseball and philosophy, baseball and history, and baseball and baseball.
Showing posts with label Interleague Play. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Interleague Play. Show all posts
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Friday, May 16, 2008
Screwing in lightbulbs
So, checked the sites today. No Bruce call up. Patterson still on the roster. Fogg and Belisle, too, though the latter has been skipped. I guess rain is good for something.
I love these series with the Indians. I do believe there should be fewer interleague games, but I don't want to see these series go.
My first Indians game was in the late eighties at old Memorial Stadium. Talk about a dump. They were playing the A's led by the Bash Brothers, and well, there weren't too many people in attendance on that day. See, baseball is cyclical like that. You'll have your periods of winning years followed by periods of losing years. For the Reds, the winning years have far outnumbered the losing years since the end of WWII. Seems like we're poised to break out of these losing years soon unless Jocketty trades away our youth for some aging veteran hasbeens. What a nightmare.
Anyway, I went up to Cleveland in 2000 and saw the Reds play in what will always be called the Jake. That was when they sold out every game after that great run in the late nineties which culminated in that World Series loss in 1997. I watched that series while living in Luxembourg. You can imagine two women asking a bartender in a small town Luxembourgish townee bar in broken French to watch a baseball game, but hey, we had to do what we had to do to watch it. The grumpy old men in the bar found us amusing and stared most of the night while mumbling in Luxembourgish. That was the first time I watched the Tribe in the post-season overseas, the second being last October in Bulgaria. Hmm...maybe I should stay stateside when the team plays in October.
I'll be down in Cincy on Sunday to see the latest Reds-Indians series - it'll be the first time I see Voltron pitch. Then in June I'm going to Cleveland to watch the Reds.
Odds and ends...
As I was looking for the ticket stub from that Indians game at Memorial to double check the dates, I came across my 1990 Leaf Frank Thomas Rookie Card, once the most valuable of my collection at $90 and held in a four screw container to maintain its mint condition. The baseball card industry screwed itself by getting greedy and making the hobby something only adults with disposable income could afford to buy, and now that same card is being sold for around $40, still a good value for a piece of cardboard. All of the insert madness and the pre-rookie infant seat garbage that the industry started producing coupled with the explosion of "new" companies (most of which were owned by one of the big three, then four, then five) killed the value of cards as well as the fun of collecting. Do you know any kids who trade baseball cards any more?
Since my laptop died for good (not a hard drive problem, at least, but a problem with a crack in either the video card or the motherboard, something that will probably cost more to repair than a new laptop), I haven't been able to post photos or photoshops and am hoping Santa Claus breaks his stubbornness and brings me a new one now instead of in December. Santa's a Reds fan, right? I mean, he wears the colors. Except in Britain, apparently. You know, cuz Santa is an employee of Coca-Cola.
Also, don't forget to visit Let's Go Tribe for the other side's take on this weekend's series.
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I love these series with the Indians. I do believe there should be fewer interleague games, but I don't want to see these series go.
My first Indians game was in the late eighties at old Memorial Stadium. Talk about a dump. They were playing the A's led by the Bash Brothers, and well, there weren't too many people in attendance on that day. See, baseball is cyclical like that. You'll have your periods of winning years followed by periods of losing years. For the Reds, the winning years have far outnumbered the losing years since the end of WWII. Seems like we're poised to break out of these losing years soon unless Jocketty trades away our youth for some aging veteran hasbeens. What a nightmare.
Anyway, I went up to Cleveland in 2000 and saw the Reds play in what will always be called the Jake. That was when they sold out every game after that great run in the late nineties which culminated in that World Series loss in 1997. I watched that series while living in Luxembourg. You can imagine two women asking a bartender in a small town Luxembourgish townee bar in broken French to watch a baseball game, but hey, we had to do what we had to do to watch it. The grumpy old men in the bar found us amusing and stared most of the night while mumbling in Luxembourgish. That was the first time I watched the Tribe in the post-season overseas, the second being last October in Bulgaria. Hmm...maybe I should stay stateside when the team plays in October.
I'll be down in Cincy on Sunday to see the latest Reds-Indians series - it'll be the first time I see Voltron pitch. Then in June I'm going to Cleveland to watch the Reds.
Odds and ends...
As I was looking for the ticket stub from that Indians game at Memorial to double check the dates, I came across my 1990 Leaf Frank Thomas Rookie Card, once the most valuable of my collection at $90 and held in a four screw container to maintain its mint condition. The baseball card industry screwed itself by getting greedy and making the hobby something only adults with disposable income could afford to buy, and now that same card is being sold for around $40, still a good value for a piece of cardboard. All of the insert madness and the pre-rookie infant seat garbage that the industry started producing coupled with the explosion of "new" companies (most of which were owned by one of the big three, then four, then five) killed the value of cards as well as the fun of collecting. Do you know any kids who trade baseball cards any more?
Since my laptop died for good (not a hard drive problem, at least, but a problem with a crack in either the video card or the motherboard, something that will probably cost more to repair than a new laptop), I haven't been able to post photos or photoshops and am hoping Santa Claus breaks his stubbornness and brings me a new one now instead of in December. Santa's a Reds fan, right? I mean, he wears the colors. Except in Britain, apparently. You know, cuz Santa is an employee of Coca-Cola.
Also, don't forget to visit Let's Go Tribe for the other side's take on this weekend's series.
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Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Streeeeeeeeeeeeeeetch
Today on MLB.com, there appears a screen entitled "Classic reunions: Series stir Game 7 memories."No they don't.
First of all, it is June, not October. Secondly, what the heck does a team who played in the World Series two decades ago have to do with a team today, especially when a team like the 2007 Royals is one of the jokes of baseball? Thirdly, with the exception of the Royals-Cards series (due to the Missouri factor), not a single one of the other series mentioned is interesting. Yes, that 1991 World Series was a good one, but I'd hardly call the 1997 or 2001 Series memorable for anyone other than fans of the teams involved.
I still like interleague play, but there's too much of it, and there's too much hype about dull series like these. And I hate how all of these interleague series are bunched up! Half of June feels meaningless because of them.
I am looking forward to seeing the Suburb of Los Angeles, California Angels of Orange County play because they are a good team I rarely get a chance to watch, but if there was any faux hype about this Reds-Angels series, I'd roll my eyes at that, too!
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