My three baseball games in three days ended with the one with the least desirable outcome — a walk off homerun by Brandon Inge in the bottom of the ninth to give the Tigers the victory. I did get to see a Torii Hunter homerun and almost a second one (but it’s 420 ft to deep center at Comerica). Plus, this time my parents were with me, which is a plus. And no matter the outcome, it was still my third baseball game in three days. How bad could that have been, really?
(Pictures and perhaps a longer report to follow… When I Have Time.)

Took a break from MLB today and went down to Toledo with my parents to see the Twins AAA team, the Rochester Redwings, beat the Tigers AAA team, the Toledo Mudhens. The scouting report: the Redwings play solid defense and Toledo is prone to mental errors in the field. Mike Venafro, a bullpen pitcher for Rochester, has one of the wackier deliveries I’ve seen. It’s sidearm… but just barely. I’d call it a submarine pitch. He doesn’t have much control over it yet.
Also, it rained and I got wet, but still stayed to score every pitch.

Justin Morneau’s 7th inning homerun

Damn, those seats were good. Longer report to follow.

What a beautiful day for a ball game!
Amrys was in town visiting Paul, so the three of us made plans to catch a baseball game today — and boy, did we luck out in game selection. The weather was fantastic — upper 70s. The seats were in the shade out the sun — but still with a good view of the field. And then there was the game itself…
The first inning started out great for the Tigers, particularly for my fantasy players, Curtis Granderson and Magglio Ordonez. Granderson led off with a double, and scored on a Placido Polanco single, which was followed by an Omar Infante single. Then my other player, Mags, hit a single up the middle and knocked in those two runs. Detroit looked infallible with the 3-0 lead so early on, but the White Sox decided to demonstrate that they were in town to play some baseball too.
It started with a Pierzynski solo shot in the 2nd and was followed by two runs in the 5th to tie it up (including one scored by my only White Sox fantasy player in the field today, Juan Uribe). In the meantime, the Tigers didn’t get another base runner until the 7th when they squandered a walk and a single, leaving Carlos Guillen and Sean Casey stranded. It looked like the White Sox may have sealed the deal in the 8th when Joe Crede hit a two run blast to left center to put the Sox up 5-3. When the Tigers went down 1-2-3 in the bottom of the inning, fairweather fans began to slowly trickle out of the stadium.
But then the top of the ninth ended with a stellar double play and it looked like the big orange cats might try and scratch their way back after all. But the bottom of the ninth didn’t start well when Infante popped up to second and Mags struck out on four pitches. Guillen hit a single up the middle to keep Detroit alive, but with two outs already and Marcus “.125” Thames at the plate, the stands were emptying fast as the crowd was more worried about the impending traffic jam in the parking lot. But then one of those miracle plays that can only happen in baseball happened. The bottom of the ninth, two outs, and a guy who had already struck out twice and hit into a double play once at the plate. And I’m sure you’ve guessed already — Thames hit the ball 395 feet, over the left field wall to tie the game up. All those people who thought they were leaving quickly sat down.
After Sean Casey got on with a single, due up was catcher Mike Rabelo, 0 for 9 on the season. Anyone who was expecting a miracle from Rabelo was a fool and even Jim Leyland knew that. While Pudge Rodriguez thought he was getting a day off today, everyone in the stadium knew they wanted the future hall of famer up there instead of a guy batting .000. And so he put on a helmet, stepped into the batter’s box and the crowd went nuts. The game was on the line. It was one of those moments at a baseball game where you can just feel that you’re about to see something special. And sure enough — Pudge scored the winning run. Tiger victory!
Only that wasn’t until the 12th when Placido Polanco hit him in after he and Granderson walked. At that moment in the bottom of the ninth, Pudge struck out very anticlimactically and the game went to extra innings. But this meant that Pudge actually caught the last three innings, his 1,951st game behind the plate, securing him fourth place all time in games caught.
Other than when my Tiger boyfriend, Brandon Inge, hit a double and was stranded, the 10th and 11th innings were tense but uneventful. (Inge also made two masterful plays at third in the top of the 10th.) Amrys’s scorecard only went to eleven, so she didn’t get to score the 12th inning. (A note to Spinal Tap — sometimes even eleven is not enough.) For her sake, here’s the play by play of the game’s final inning, in excruciating detail:

Read the rest of this entry →

Women’s bathroom sign at US Cellular Field in Chicago

The Twins have recently unveiled the plans for their new ballpark, opening in 2010. Besides the obvious goodness that is an outdoor ballpark (even though this late winter weather might imply to some people that occassionally roofs are useful), I was particularly tickled by the comparisons page. Was I excited that they claim the new park will be most similar to PNC and AT&T Parks? Well, yes — I’ve been to both of those parks and thought they were great. But since they’re using the same architects, that’s not that surprising. (Although, my favorite part of those parks was that in both cases, the park is right on a body of water and homeruns can “splashdown” — the Twins stadium will be about six blocks from the Mighty Mississippi. Harmon Killebrew probably couldn’t even launch one that far.)

No, no… the best part for me? The bathroom ratio:

Finally! A major sports facility that gets that women pee more often and take longer to do it. Now as long as they don’t give it some stupid corporate name, this might become my favorite modern stadium.

Prepping for my upcoming prelims has meant that I haven’t had as much chance to watch ballgames as I’d like. Plus, none of the Twins games were broadcast nationally and I don’t yet feel like going out of my way to see the Tigers play. But my fantasy league trekked on without me paying much attention. I went 6-4, earning points for runs, hits, homeruns, RBIs, saves, and WHIP. I lost points for stolen bases, wins, strikeouts, and ERA. I blame Boof Bonser for those last three, and as for stolen bases… well, it appears my players are too honest to steal anything. But overall, I’m holding steady at 2nd place in the league. I have a feeling this can’t last too much longer.
This week I’ll actually get to a game that seven of my players will be in — White Sox at Tigers with Amrys, who will be in town this weekend.

If you’re here from the Glee Club Scavenger Hunt, you really want to follow this link
After Santana blew away the White Sox with a one-hitter yesterday, manager Ozzie Guillen came up with the following tactic to handle Santana for next time:

I’m going to call my mom in Venezuela to come here and cook for him. We’ll poison him. If he eats what my mom cooks, he will be in trouble to pitch the next day.

I guess that counts as a strategy. (I should mention that the article I read stressed that he was joking… just in case anyone actually believes that Guillen would stoop so low.)
In other news, I fared pretty well in my first week of fantasy baseball, dominating the pitching stats and holding my own in the offensive categories — and this with a good chunk of my players losing a game due to snow (Twins, Tigers, and White Sox). Unfortunately, looking at how the Twins are doing tonight, I don’t expect the same for this week. Who is Sidney Ponson and who said he could pitch today? Clearly not a good idea…

Ahhh, like the first day of spring, it’s finally here — opening day. (Okay, technically it was yesterday, but as I am neither a Mets nor a Cardinals fan, it was really today.) I caught the very end of the Tigers loss to the Blue Jays, and noted that ESPN was covering the Red Sox-Royals game so I changed the channel quickly expecting to rekindle my love affair with the Sox after last year’s end of season break. But, uh, Curt? While it’s awesome that you have a blog now, you’re not going to win me back by losing 7-1 to the Royals. It was so disappointing that I actually left after the fourth inning to go to the gym and work out. And I never work out.
But it’s okay, because those games were just warm ups anyway. At 7:10 pm was the nationally televised game featuring the reigning AL Cy Young, MVP, and batting champ and I would be plopped on my futon watching it. Santana came out of the gate firing rockets, giving me a good feeling about how the game might go. Joe Mauer, the starting catcher of my fantasy league, started completely in character by getting a hit in the middle of an inning in which none of the other Twins did anything interesting. Oh, Joe, I love you and you earned me two points tonight, but I really hope you get hits in bigger innings soon.
Then in the second, my starting first baseman, the reigning MVP, came up to the plate. I looked at the TV and, just because I felt like it, I said, “Just jack one out, Justin”… and then he did, on his first pitch of the season. Four points for me — one for the hit, one for the RBI, one for the run, and one for the homer. I jumped up and let out a squeal, realized I was alone in my room with no one to celebrate with, and picked up the phone to call my dad. And then, not two minutes later, while I was on the phone explaining how I had called Morneau’s shot, Torii Hunter decided to remind us that he had 30 homeruns last season too and he jacked his first pitch over the right field wall. He’s not on my fantasy team, but I didn’t particularly care at that moment.
Then came a dilemma: Monday is trivia night at our local watering hole and people wanted me to go. I looked at the game, I looked at them. I watched Santana strike out Melvin Mora to end the third and decided that with Johan on the mound and the Twins up by 2, the game was well in hand — and that I would try to convince the bar to tune to ESPN2.
Upon arriving at the bar, I realized that I wasn’t going to get my television choice in the main room… something about some basketball game. But as luck would have it, we went to check out the non-smoking back to find it empty with the TV remote just sitting unattended at one of the tables. I flipped to the game to find that the Orioles had gone ahead 3-2. I mildly panicked, but relaxed when I realized that the Twins had the bases loaded with only one out. They only scored one run that inning, but they picked up three more in the next (and three more points for me) and never looked back, eventually winning 7-4. In the fantasy league, I picked up 11 points from this game alone, 7 of them from Morneau.
No one else ever came to sit in the back room, so the waiter let us keep the remote and I was able to finish the game while also spouting out the occassional trivia factoid. Most popular first name in the world? Mohammad. Most homeruns for the Detroit Tigers in 2006? Brandon Inge. Best team in the American League Central? Minnesota Twins.
Okay, that last one wasn’t actually question — but that’s the right answer.

I’ve managed to join a fantasy baseball league this year, with none other than Joe “I’m on it” Graham as commissioner. The draft was this evening. I think I screwed myself slightly by grabbing Morneau and Mauer first when I perhaps could have grabbed some bigger bats, but really… the AL MVP and AL Batting Champ is not a bad haul. (AL Cy Young winner Johan Santana was taken before my first pick came up.) I think my big steal of the evening was Boof Bonser. They may mock me now, but when he has 15+ wins at the end of the season we’ll see who’s laughing.
And yes, I drafted non-Twins players too.
Without further ado, here’s my team, for better or for worse…

Read the rest of this entry →

With the power of Netflix, I’ve recently watched the entire 18 hours (plus bonus features) of Ken Burns’s* epic miniseries on the sport I love so well. Made in 1994, just before the strike that caused most of the country to re-evaluate its love affair with the game, it’s a beautiful film, full of trivia nuggets (Merkle’s Boner, anyone?) and interviews with legends now passed like Buck O’Neil, Ted Williams, and Mickey Mantle.
A few of the other reviews on Netflix complained about the New York/Boston focus, and I’d have to agree. The general response has been that the film is at it’s strongest covering the earlier years, when Boston and New York were the dominant cities with five teams between them. The film loses its way a little in the later years, partly because baseball as a sport has meant less to the country in the later half of the century. So, I can forgive barely mentioning the Twins until the coverage of the 1991 World Series because they weren’t around until 1961 — but it’s not like the Washington Senators got much coverage either, save for Walter Johnson. (Although really… no mention of Harmon Killebrew or Rod Carew? That’s just not right.) And as for teams I don’t care as much about, I think I could probably count on one hand the number of times the Cleveland Indians were mentioned and they’ve been around since the beginning.
That being said, for covering 100+ years of history, the documentary does a good job of carrying some semblance of a narrative, leaning heavily on the role racism has played in the game. In the “Making of…” documentary (a documentary about a documentary!), Burns says that Baseball is almost a sequel to his earlier work, which I was forced to watch all of in fifth grade, The Civil War. Given that, it makes perfect sense that the “hero” of the film is Jackie Robinson. He was using the history of baseball to further tell the history of America, something he also did later in his other epic mini-series, Jazz. For him, racism has been a central tenet for much of American culture, and I can’t say that I disagree with him.
Although, even I have to admit that Burns tends to over emphasize what is, at it’s core, just a game. But the florid prose he uses to describe the game puts me in just the right mood to ramp up for the upcoming season, despite overblown salaries, shady deals about television coverage, and possibly the worst commissioner we’ve had in a long time, if not ever. And so, I leave you with what is both the introduction and conclusion to the film…

It is played everywhere. In parks and playgrounds and prison yards. In back alleys and farmers’ fields. By small children and old men. Raw amateurs and millionaire professionals. It is a leisurely game that demands blinding speed. The only game in which the defense has the ball. It follows the seasons, beginning each year with the fond expectancy of springtime, and ending with the hard facts of autumn. It is a haunted game, in which every player is measured against the ghosts of all who have gone before. Most of all, it is about time and timelessness. Speed and grace. Failure and loss. Imperishable hope. And coming home.

* — Someone tell me the correct way to make Burns possessive… is it Burns’ or Burns’s?