Beating Baltimoyer

Hey, what do you know. The Mariners won tonight, 8-6, making that, uhh... four in a row. Wins, that is. And tomorrow night we're going up against John Halama (?!), which means that in theory, we have a shot at extending that to five wins in a row. Jamie Moyer pitched a good game, Eddie Guardado got a save (!), Lopez kicked butt, and Sean Green... he's still, well, green. Big Richie even hit a grand slam tonight, which is always a good sign.

The Chiba Lotte Marines have won 9 in a row, sweeping Hiroshima, Yokohama, and Chunichi in interleague play. Of course, they lost the last two against Hanshin, and start a series against Hanshin in roughly five minutes, so who knows. I'm torn at this point, to be honest -- if the Fighters and Marines are seriously both pulling at first place, who will I cheer for? It's never been a problem in the last few years...

Heh, though, the CL officials gave Shinjo a smackdown for wearing his Hanshin uniform last week. And in other news, former Seattle Mariners and Yokohama Bay Stars closer Kazuhiro Sasaki apparently has decided to buy race horses. He may name his first one "fork". Erm.

Also, Chris Coste is cool. If he seriously writes a book called "Hey... I'm Just a 33-Year-Old Rookie," I'll totally buy it. Seriously, though, I hope he gets a couple of at-bats for the Phillies and does well; it'll just be another crazy story about this year.

Athletics Nation is cool, too. Blez got Justin Duchscherer to share a clubhouse story on the blog, which is just pretty rad. Even moreso, I enjoy the photo threads there, like this one from last weekend. BCG has a knack for capturing the games and the players pretty well, I think. I'm not just saying this because I've got a huge crush on Nick Swisher. Really.

Today was Arthur Conan Doyle's birthday, but apparently it didn't help our Doyle, as he was 0-for-3 as Tacoma fell 3-1 to Memphis, which seems to be the happy hunting ground of "where the hell are they now?" ex-majorleaguers. Desi Relaford? Timo Perez? Junior Spivey? Brian Daubach? What? Maybe they should take Kevin Appier off our hands...