Saturday, April 15, 2006

Friday's roundup, from across the country!

So, here I am in beautiful sunny Pittsburgh. For whatever reason, US Airways routed me from Seattle to Pittsburgh through North Carolina. I was disappointed that there was no Chick-Fil-A in the airport there.

Anyway, for the ride, I invested in an old reliable travel aid: a box of Chips Ahoy chocolate chip cookies. When you fall asleep in mid-air reading Baseball Between the Numbers, and you wake up all bleary and cramped and your mouth is dry and your eyes are dry and you're thinking, wait, what if Rickey Henderson DID have Pete Incaviglia's legs?, and you just had a bizarre dream where baseball players started stealing knees on the black market and caused a new meaning of "roll a joint", well, in these cases there's no better cure-all than a good chocolate chip cookie. Yes, sir, when you are way up in the sky, a cookie will really hit the spot.

My point is, the Phillies went to Colorado for the weekend, and while they were way up in the mile high city last night, they got a lot of cookies. I mean, they REALLY hit the sweet spot. 10 runs, 16 hits -- heck, even Ryan Madson was 3-for-3 with a walk. Chase Utley was the big cookie monster, hitting two home runs and a double, with 5 RBI. Rowand, Utley, Lieby and Madson were the guys to rack up 3 hits each, while Rowand and Burrell also racked up home runs. Only J-Roll and David Bell went hitless. It was, indeed, a masterful slaughter of the Colorado squad. Ryan Madson, in addition to being a hitting machine, went 7 innings and gave up only 3 earned runs, no homers, for the win. I suppose this is what you'd expect though, given that "Colorado Rockies" anagrams to "Coors Cookie Lard".

The Mariners game at Fenway was a tough 2-1 loss for Jamie Moyer, which is a shame as it's probably one of the best outings he's ever had at Fenway, going 6 innings, walking 3, striking out 8, and only giving up 2 runs. Unfortunately, Curt Schilling was even better, going 8 innings, striking out 7, walking none, and only giving up one run. Still, it could have been a lot worse. In a fit of irony, the guys giving Moyer the most trouble were at the bottom of the lineup, not the heart of the lineup, although leadoff man Kevin Youkilis, the Greek God of Overused Moneyball Jokes, had this one at-bat where he fouled off about ninety pitches in a row and made it impossible for Moyer to throw him a strike and so he eventually walked.

Tom Glavine also had a pretty good outing for the Mets against the Brewers, going six innings, striking out *11*, walking one and giving up one unearned run, as the Mets did eventually prevail 4-3.

In other things around the web, here's the best Lew Ford article ever, from Bat-Girl. "I'll be looking for this article. What are you going to put in there about the computer stuff?" [Lew Ford] asked. "You have to remember: I don't take the big one on every trip. You have to make sure to put that in there."

It's good to know he gave up on World of Warcraft, at least. That makes Lew Ford a much better man than many of my friends.

It's a given that I almost always check B-R's baseball birthdays for any given day, and that at work I have a Ballparks calendar. Yesterday, April 14, is a curious day for this. You see, the first baseball birthday I *ever* learned was April 14th -- Pete Rose. When I was a little kid, he wore uniform number 14 for the Phillies, and my mom explained to me that the 14th was his birthday. I think I knew Pete Rose's birthday before I knew my brother's birthday. But, anyway.

The Ballparks calendar generally gives first preference to HoFers. Now, there are no HoFers with April 14th birthdays yet, as Pete Rose is unlikely to ever become one -- but there's another guy with a birthday on the 14th who is a pretty obvious shoe-in -- Greg Maddux celebrated his 40th birthday. And he won his 320th game on Wednesday, and most of the game wrapup article features asking his teammates, "Can you see yourself pitching when you're 40?" I suppose Mariners fans have an odd perspective on this, given that Jamie Moyer went 21-7 at the age of 40. Maddux and Moyer both were drafted by the Cubs in 1984 (2nd and 6th rounds respectively), made their debuts during the 1986 season, and are both skinny guys who rely more on control than power. You have to wonder what they might have replied if you'd seen them both sitting on a Cubs bench in the late 80's and asked, "Can you see yourself pitching when you're 40?"

Apparently Tom Hanks was in Japan promoting the movie "The Da Vinci Code", and stopped by Chiba Marine Stadium to see a Marines game and say hi to Bobby Valentine Unfortunately, it was the game that the Marines lost 13-0 to Rakuten, but still. Bobby Valentine has some neat pictures on his blog with him and Tom Hanks and some Marines staff.

Bobby's blog also had these cute pictures of the Lotte players getting their WBC medals a few days ago. For those unfamiliar with the team and since he didn't label them, the 8 pictures are, in order, of: Hiroyuki Kobayashi, Naoyuki Shimizu, Yasuhiko Yabuta, Souichi Fujita, Tsuyoshi Nishioka, Tomoya Satozaki, Toshiaki Imae, and Shunsuke Watanabe. I guess they've got to have something to revel in while the team's getting off to a crazy slow start, although they did manage to impressively hammer Nishiguchi and the Seibu Lions 14-5 yesterday, scoring all 14 of those runs in the last three innings, 7 of them in the 9th ining. Crazy. Maybe they've finally had it with sucking and are going to stop.

No comments: