In preparing for my transpacific move, I took a box of (non-baseball) books to Half Price Books the other day, and during the 15 minutes I had to wait for them to decide to give me a whopping sum of $8 for the whole box, I stumbled on this book, which I started reading in the store and then decided to just go ahead and buy. It was $5.50, which after tax left me with a remainder of about $2 to put towards a Chipotle burrito for dinner.
But I digress.
Roger Maris: A Man For All Seasons, by Maury Allen
I've read one or two other books about Roger Maris, but this one was actually written in 1986, for the 25th anniversary of the 61 in '61 year. Sadly, it was also written right after Roger's death, which means that a lot of the interview quotes in the book talk about what the speaker was thinking or doing when Roger died, or at his funeral, and so on.
About 70% of this book is straightforward history and prose, and about 30% is sections of text transcribed from interviews. I thought that this style of writing would grate on me after a while, but I actually enjoyed a lot of the short vignettes related by the different people, who ranged from Roger's friends and family to his teammates and opponents from various points in his baseball career. Most of the time there's a few paragraphs of lead-in, then a short blurb introducing the next speaker, and then several pages of prose that follow from whatever the speaker had to say. It's very different than just reading a lot of prose with various one-line quotes thrown in from interviews, and there's often funny little things that come out, like the guy who gave up Roger's first home run in 1957 (Jack Crimian, who only pitched in 4 games that year, and went to the same high school as my dad) describing it, or Jim Bouton relating how when he first came up to the majors, Roger gave him a new glove, or the story about how Mantle sent Roger a wooden carving of a hand extending the middle finger, which Roger would keep on his chair when he didn't want to talk to reporters.
There's some pretty sad parts -- I was on the bus home from work reading the chapter where former Yankees and fellow pallbearers Moose Skowron and Johnny Blanchard were talking about Maris's funeral in detail, and I nearly started to cry. I had to put the book down for a bit to make myself stop sniffling, which was sort of embarrassing on the bus.
If there's any failing of this book, it might be to provide the reader with some more details of Roger's life away from his baseball career. The bulk of the book is about Roger as a baseball player, though to its credit, it evenly covers his entire career, not just the 1961 season that everyone knows about. In a 12-year career he played in 7 World Series and got 3 rings -- and 2 of those series (one win) were with the Cardinals after he left the Yankees. The author was just getting started as a sportswriter during Maris's career, so he has some interesting quotes and observations from Maris's games and postgames, especially from the later years.
And really, given how Roger wanted to be a private sort of guy and keep the media and public away from him as much as possible, it's not surprising that a lot of details about his life either don't exist or aren't that interesting. "Roger worked as a beer distributor in Florida for 20 years" probably isn't that great of a story anyway. And in all fairness, after I got so freaked out reading Luckiest Man and the details on Lou Gehrig's medical condition, I'm actually kind of glad that Maury Allen didn't make a point of going too deep into Maris's condition and how it deteriorated from the lymphoma.
Anyway, this was a pretty good read, and a relatively good bus book as well. If you're interested in borrowing/buying my copy and local to Seattle, let me know, as I'd feel silly putting such a good book into indefinite storage.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Friday, July 06, 2007
Friday Foto and some catching up
I went to last Saturday's Mariners-Jays game with Bretticus and ETownCoug from Lookout Landing, but I never got around to writing anything about it, mostly because I suddenly went into high-gear "OMG I'm moving to Japan" mode. I have some notes about various plays that happened, but it seems silly to try to write it all up a week later. I will tell you that the AM-PM "too much of a good thing" was 75 boxes of Junior Mints, which they estimated to be about 3857 candies. The other weird moment of the night was when they decided to replace Miguel Batista on the mound in the 7th inning -- so they said on the speaker, "Now pitching, Eric O'Flaherty," and they put his stats up on the board, and he even ran about 30 feet out of the bullpen, and suddenly he stopped and ran back to the bullpen and Sean Green ran out instead, and they put his stats and stuff up instead, and it was just pretty bizarre. Green pitched an inning and O'Flaherty replaced him after that. I don't think I'd ever seen that before -- I thought that once you put up the info and make the announcement, you have to have that guy come out to pitch, but, hey, whatever.
Anyway, we sat in the upper deck so I didn't take many game pictures, but I did catch some batting practice, in-between desperately trying to get a full set of trading cards. (I was missing the end of the alphabet and had dupes of the Mariner Moose, which of course nobody wanted. Eventually I was doing my usual walk-back-and-forth-taking-pictures thing and saw that someone had left an extra set of cards under a seat, so... I picked them up. They were missing the beginning of the alphabet and had extra Jamie Burkes, so that worked out well, and I completed my set and gave the rest to Coug later on.) Many Jays players came out and signed stuff -- I got Shaun Marcum -- and then I watched Roy Halladay warm up and do bullpen throwing. I've been sort of fascinated by him for a while, so I was glad to see him pitch in person. I was also, of course, glad that the Mariners won, bringing my personal record to 13-4.
Pitching over the Halladay weekend.
In theory, the real "picture of the day" from that game was when we met up with legendary LL mascot and Beltre worshipper "Red", but I thought it might be weird to put that one up on the front page here.
Photosets:
Mariners vs. Blue Jays, June 30, 2007
Mariners vs. Red Sox, June 26, 2007
All-Star results:
Hideki Okajima and Chris Young. I wish Pat Neshek had made it, and I voted for him a few hundred times, but as I said... Okajima! Fighters pride!
NPB All-Star Rosters in addition to the ridiculous fan vote. (English) Yakult's Seth Greisinger got a spot as a CL pitcher. The Yokohama pitching reps are sideweirder Atsushi Kizuka and closer Marc Kroon (I sort of expected Hayato Terahara to get a spot, not that Kizuka or Kroon are bad choices). Someone also finally noticed that Baystars catcher Ryouji Aikawa doesn't suck. And Dragonbutt got selected for his first all-star team too! ...as an infielder. I believe he was on the ballots as an outfielder though.
In the PL, Lotte's Naruse got his first spot, but Shunsuke Watanabe didn't get a spot? Hiroyuki Nakajima and Tsuyoshi Nishioka go with Munenori Kawasaki to give the Ikemen Infield. As deserved, the Fighters' outfield of Atsunori Inaba and Hichori Morimoto got spots on the roster as well, so look forward to Hichori pulling some kind of grand stunt during the games. (Last year most people remember him dressing up as Piccolo from Dragonball Z. Today, a bread company made a life-sized loaf of that for him. You could call it deadpan.)
Fantastic article by Jim Allen about the ludicrous Pacific League all-star ballot. He says it even better than I ever could in a million rants.
Some links that I meant to post at some point:
Shannon Drayer wrote a pretty interesting entry in her blog about why Mike Hargrove left, which may shed some light on things. Either way, it's an interesting read.
Kazuhiro Kiyohara's season is over. Possibly even his career...
Fun website put together by 7 members of the Yokohama Bay Stars: 55 Sports. Shuuichi Murata, Katsuaki Furuki, Naoki Mitsubashi, Masaaki Koike, Takeshi Tsutsumiuchi, Shougo Kimura, and Yuuki Kohno, all of whom were born in Showa 55 (or 1980, aka the Matsuzaka Generation Year). The players have blogs on that website, and in addition plan to use it to put together some baseball clinics and charity events. It's kind of neat that Yokohama's doing this well and so some of the good young players are getting recognized.
Kevin Youkilis mentioned on his blog that he set a record going 120 games without an error at first base during the Mariners-Sox series last week. "I'd never really heard of Stuffy McInnis before this week...."
CJ Nitkowski is updating his site again, but even more awesome, he has been putting up videos on YouTube of what it's like inside the Softbank Hawks clubhouse (and in the team bus, and out at Karaoke, and so on). This is so incredibly awesome that I can't even begin to describe it.
There's a really neat best athlete for each uniform number article in SI -- even if it's pretty football-heavy. I'm sad that Mike Schmidt was just the runner-up for #20 and that they didn't even bother mentioning Ichiro for #51. Still, I've actually been trying to collect shots for another numbers series sometime in the offseason, so I think it's neat to think about the different players who've worn different numbers.
Oh yeah, and the Phillies are up to 9997 losses as of this writing.
I'll probably edit in a few more links as I remember which ones I wanted to share.
Anyway, we sat in the upper deck so I didn't take many game pictures, but I did catch some batting practice, in-between desperately trying to get a full set of trading cards. (I was missing the end of the alphabet and had dupes of the Mariner Moose, which of course nobody wanted. Eventually I was doing my usual walk-back-and-forth-taking-pictures thing and saw that someone had left an extra set of cards under a seat, so... I picked them up. They were missing the beginning of the alphabet and had extra Jamie Burkes, so that worked out well, and I completed my set and gave the rest to Coug later on.) Many Jays players came out and signed stuff -- I got Shaun Marcum -- and then I watched Roy Halladay warm up and do bullpen throwing. I've been sort of fascinated by him for a while, so I was glad to see him pitch in person. I was also, of course, glad that the Mariners won, bringing my personal record to 13-4.
Pitching over the Halladay weekend.
In theory, the real "picture of the day" from that game was when we met up with legendary LL mascot and Beltre worshipper "Red", but I thought it might be weird to put that one up on the front page here.
Photosets:
Mariners vs. Blue Jays, June 30, 2007
Mariners vs. Red Sox, June 26, 2007
All-Star results:
Hideki Okajima and Chris Young. I wish Pat Neshek had made it, and I voted for him a few hundred times, but as I said... Okajima! Fighters pride!
NPB All-Star Rosters in addition to the ridiculous fan vote. (English) Yakult's Seth Greisinger got a spot as a CL pitcher. The Yokohama pitching reps are sideweirder Atsushi Kizuka and closer Marc Kroon (I sort of expected Hayato Terahara to get a spot, not that Kizuka or Kroon are bad choices). Someone also finally noticed that Baystars catcher Ryouji Aikawa doesn't suck. And Dragonbutt got selected for his first all-star team too! ...as an infielder. I believe he was on the ballots as an outfielder though.
In the PL, Lotte's Naruse got his first spot, but Shunsuke Watanabe didn't get a spot? Hiroyuki Nakajima and Tsuyoshi Nishioka go with Munenori Kawasaki to give the Ikemen Infield. As deserved, the Fighters' outfield of Atsunori Inaba and Hichori Morimoto got spots on the roster as well, so look forward to Hichori pulling some kind of grand stunt during the games. (Last year most people remember him dressing up as Piccolo from Dragonball Z. Today, a bread company made a life-sized loaf of that for him. You could call it deadpan.)
Fantastic article by Jim Allen about the ludicrous Pacific League all-star ballot. He says it even better than I ever could in a million rants.
Some links that I meant to post at some point:
Shannon Drayer wrote a pretty interesting entry in her blog about why Mike Hargrove left, which may shed some light on things. Either way, it's an interesting read.
Kazuhiro Kiyohara's season is over. Possibly even his career...
Fun website put together by 7 members of the Yokohama Bay Stars: 55 Sports. Shuuichi Murata, Katsuaki Furuki, Naoki Mitsubashi, Masaaki Koike, Takeshi Tsutsumiuchi, Shougo Kimura, and Yuuki Kohno, all of whom were born in Showa 55 (or 1980, aka the Matsuzaka Generation Year). The players have blogs on that website, and in addition plan to use it to put together some baseball clinics and charity events. It's kind of neat that Yokohama's doing this well and so some of the good young players are getting recognized.
Kevin Youkilis mentioned on his blog that he set a record going 120 games without an error at first base during the Mariners-Sox series last week. "I'd never really heard of Stuffy McInnis before this week...."
CJ Nitkowski is updating his site again, but even more awesome, he has been putting up videos on YouTube of what it's like inside the Softbank Hawks clubhouse (and in the team bus, and out at Karaoke, and so on). This is so incredibly awesome that I can't even begin to describe it.
There's a really neat best athlete for each uniform number article in SI -- even if it's pretty football-heavy. I'm sad that Mike Schmidt was just the runner-up for #20 and that they didn't even bother mentioning Ichiro for #51. Still, I've actually been trying to collect shots for another numbers series sometime in the offseason, so I think it's neat to think about the different players who've worn different numbers.
Oh yeah, and the Phillies are up to 9997 losses as of this writing.
I'll probably edit in a few more links as I remember which ones I wanted to share.
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
All-Star Lame
The All-Star Rosters for MLB have been released, finally. Ichiro and JJ Putz are representing the Mariners. There are some sort of bizarre choices in the ranks, perhaps partially due to the requirement for every team having a representative, but whatever. I think I'm most surprised and sad that Eric Byrnes didn't get on the team -- he's having a monster year, and he's from the Bay Area and lives there and would get to be in the ASG in front of friends and family and all. And besides, he's Eric Byrnes, which is worth even more entertainment value on its own. Alas.
There's a Final Vote for the last two all-stars, and while all of the choices are legitimately guys who should or could be all-stars, I'm going to go ahead and say that I'm fully behind voting in Pat Neshek, even though my Fighters pride says I should be behind Hideki Okajima. Why? Because Pat Neshek is really goddamn cool. As he put it:
And if that wasn't enough, Pat had a contest for someone to make YouTube videos advertising his campaign, and one of the guys on his forum made this parody song for the campaign, which is awesome. I'm the queen of baseball parody lyrics, dammit, so if I say it's good, it's good. Go vote for Pat.
Now, on to some not-so-starry all-starness. The fan voting results are in for the NPB All-Star game, and it's completely retarded in the Pacific League. Now, I'm all for cheering for the Rakuten Golden Eagles because they're the crazy underdogs -- it's like being a closet Mets fan back in the mid-1960's -- but EIGHT ALL-STARS? WHAT?
Now I mean, there are a few bones I could pick with the CL -- Hisanori Takahashi is by far the best starting pitcher in the CL so far this year, but he only finished 5th in the voting, even behind his teammate Tetsuya Utsumi. I like Kenta Kurihara, but Tyrone Woods is a monster. I'm bitter about Ogasawara, of course, but as usual he's fully deserving of an all-star spot. Hirokazu Ibata is the best shortstop in Japan, so no complaints there. I'm amused that Tomoaki Kanemoto didn't place in the top 3 in CL outfielders, but since the rest of the top ten in voting are Kanemoto, Yoshinobu Takahashi, Tani, Morino (!!!!!), Akahoshi, and Alex Ramirez, I'll let it slide. I can't imagine that the rest of those guys don't end up on the roster.
You may notice that I actually listed only 6 more for the top ten, and that's because there's one outlier that doesn't really make sense -- Koichi Ogata, who's been on the DL for the last month or so, and wasn't doing so well before that. Maybe someone's stuffing the ballots for both Rakuten and Hiroshima?
The most obvious of the "WTF" choices for Rakuten are catcher Motohiro Shima (currently batting .168 and not all that great at calling a game; Lotte's Tomoya Satozaki is still the best catcher in the PL), and middle reliever Akira Matsumoto (currently with an ERA of 6.10 and has walked 14 guys and struck out 17 in 28 innings; the Fighters' Hisashi Takeda IS the best setup man in the PL (1.96 ERA, 31 K, 11 BB, 41 IP, 4-2 with 2 saves). Those are the awful choices. The "Err, OKAY" choices would be Isobe and Teppei in the outfield over Tamura and Hichori, and to be fair, much as I hate to say it since I like him, Kazuo Fukumori as closer over the unreal Takahiro Mahara, who has been just plain fantastic this year as the Hawks' closer. I mean, the guy's converted all 22 of his save chances and has allowed ONE EARNED RUN in 27 games (32 IP). I thought he was amazing last year and he's gotten even better this year.
I'm not going to comment on Masahiro Tanaka. I don't have a problem with him getting the popular vote, a la Matsuzaka, and he's been pretty damn good for an 18-year-old kid. I also have no problem with Takeshi Yamasaki getting the DH vote because he's been an absolute monster this year. But the rest of the Eagles? Uhhh, no.
Fortunately, I'm pretty sure that most of the rest of the guys who deserve to be all-stars will get chosen for it by the managers and all. But this is just seriously seriously screwed up.
There's a Final Vote for the last two all-stars, and while all of the choices are legitimately guys who should or could be all-stars, I'm going to go ahead and say that I'm fully behind voting in Pat Neshek, even though my Fighters pride says I should be behind Hideki Okajima. Why? Because Pat Neshek is really goddamn cool. As he put it:
"I really don't know how to describe this, but I'm the fan/collector/guy that somehow managed to get to the big leagues. I seriously wake up each day and can't believe how I got here and am thankful to even touch the uniform! Basically if I wasn't playing baseball right now I would probably be the guy who was coming home from work and planning a night around baseball... planning what games to go to, which minor league teams to get autographs at, which guy to take on my fantasy team and which guy to trade in MLB The Show... heck this is what I do in the off-season, no lie! Basically I'm a fan of baseball, if your team wasn't represented in this final 5 Vote I would love to represent you and all the fans of the game. I can tell you right now that nobody in the world, no other player would appreciate this more than me. So if you want somebody that is a fan of the game, a guy just like you, a guy that would probably pass out if elected to the ALL STAR game then you can help me out by voting here!"
And if that wasn't enough, Pat had a contest for someone to make YouTube videos advertising his campaign, and one of the guys on his forum made this parody song for the campaign, which is awesome. I'm the queen of baseball parody lyrics, dammit, so if I say it's good, it's good. Go vote for Pat.
Now, on to some not-so-starry all-starness. The fan voting results are in for the NPB All-Star game, and it's completely retarded in the Pacific League. Now, I'm all for cheering for the Rakuten Golden Eagles because they're the crazy underdogs -- it's like being a closet Mets fan back in the mid-1960's -- but EIGHT ALL-STARS? WHAT?
Central League Pacific League
SP Hiroki Kuroda (HC) Masahiro Tanaka (TRGE)
RP Masanori Hayashi (YG) Akira Matsumoto (TRGE)
CL Kyuji Fujikawa (HT) Kazuo Fukumori (TRGE)
C Shinnosuke Abe (YG) Motohiro Shima (TRGE)
1B Kenta Kurihara (HC) Nobuhiko Matsunaka (FSH)
2B Toshihisa Nishi (YBS) Yosuke Takahasu (TRGE)
3B Michihiro Ogasawara (YG) Hiroki Kokubo (FSH)
SS Hirokazu Ibata (CD) Munenori Kawasaki (FSH)
OF Tomonori Maeda (HC) Koichi Isobe (TRGE)
OF Norichika Aoki (YS) Teppei Tsuchiya (TRGE)
OF Kosuke Fukudome (CD) Tuffy Rhodes (OB)
DH Takeshi Yamasaki (TRGE)
Now I mean, there are a few bones I could pick with the CL -- Hisanori Takahashi is by far the best starting pitcher in the CL so far this year, but he only finished 5th in the voting, even behind his teammate Tetsuya Utsumi. I like Kenta Kurihara, but Tyrone Woods is a monster. I'm bitter about Ogasawara, of course, but as usual he's fully deserving of an all-star spot. Hirokazu Ibata is the best shortstop in Japan, so no complaints there. I'm amused that Tomoaki Kanemoto didn't place in the top 3 in CL outfielders, but since the rest of the top ten in voting are Kanemoto, Yoshinobu Takahashi, Tani, Morino (!!!!!), Akahoshi, and Alex Ramirez, I'll let it slide. I can't imagine that the rest of those guys don't end up on the roster.
You may notice that I actually listed only 6 more for the top ten, and that's because there's one outlier that doesn't really make sense -- Koichi Ogata, who's been on the DL for the last month or so, and wasn't doing so well before that. Maybe someone's stuffing the ballots for both Rakuten and Hiroshima?
The most obvious of the "WTF" choices for Rakuten are catcher Motohiro Shima (currently batting .168 and not all that great at calling a game; Lotte's Tomoya Satozaki is still the best catcher in the PL), and middle reliever Akira Matsumoto (currently with an ERA of 6.10 and has walked 14 guys and struck out 17 in 28 innings; the Fighters' Hisashi Takeda IS the best setup man in the PL (1.96 ERA, 31 K, 11 BB, 41 IP, 4-2 with 2 saves). Those are the awful choices. The "Err, OKAY" choices would be Isobe and Teppei in the outfield over Tamura and Hichori, and to be fair, much as I hate to say it since I like him, Kazuo Fukumori as closer over the unreal Takahiro Mahara, who has been just plain fantastic this year as the Hawks' closer. I mean, the guy's converted all 22 of his save chances and has allowed ONE EARNED RUN in 27 games (32 IP). I thought he was amazing last year and he's gotten even better this year.
I'm not going to comment on Masahiro Tanaka. I don't have a problem with him getting the popular vote, a la Matsuzaka, and he's been pretty damn good for an 18-year-old kid. I also have no problem with Takeshi Yamasaki getting the DH vote because he's been an absolute monster this year. But the rest of the Eagles? Uhhh, no.
Fortunately, I'm pretty sure that most of the rest of the guys who deserve to be all-stars will get chosen for it by the managers and all. But this is just seriously seriously screwed up.
Sunday, July 01, 2007
Bigger news!
Mike Hargrove resigned as manager of the Mariners.
It's pretty weird for it to happen in the midst of a winning season, I guess. It's even funnier timing after trading card day yesterday, where I'm wondering how many people were fighting over trading for a Mike Hargrove card.
I'm personally one of these people who thinks managers don't have THAT much effect on a team winning or losing, so while I was never one of those super-negative "die in a fire, Grover" types that permeate the blogosphere, I'm also not like "oh no! Don't go!"
John McLaren will be the Mariners manager for the rest of the year, starting Monday.
It's pretty weird for it to happen in the midst of a winning season, I guess. It's even funnier timing after trading card day yesterday, where I'm wondering how many people were fighting over trading for a Mike Hargrove card.
I'm personally one of these people who thinks managers don't have THAT much effect on a team winning or losing, so while I was never one of those super-negative "die in a fire, Grover" types that permeate the blogosphere, I'm also not like "oh no! Don't go!"
John McLaren will be the Mariners manager for the rest of the year, starting Monday.
Friday, June 29, 2007
Big News!
Craig Biggio got his 3000th hit!
Frank Thomas got his 500th home run!
Oh, and I'm moving to Japan in a month. I leave Seattle on July 30th. I'll be living in Tokyo, teaching English with GEOS. Come visit me!
(yes, that's the "crazy news" I had a month or so ago, but I couldn't make a real announcement until I told my boss and coworkers. No, I don't know what I plan to do with the blog. Any suggestions? Maybe it'll just have to become a different Marinerds of sorts...)
Frank Thomas got his 500th home run!
Oh, and I'm moving to Japan in a month. I leave Seattle on July 30th. I'll be living in Tokyo, teaching English with GEOS. Come visit me!
(yes, that's the "crazy news" I had a month or so ago, but I couldn't make a real announcement until I told my boss and coworkers. No, I don't know what I plan to do with the blog. Any suggestions? Maybe it'll just have to become a different Marinerds of sorts...)
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Mixed signals
I promise to write an actual coherent entry one of these days. Honest.
For now, I have another "hey, this picture I took kind of sucks, but let me add a caption to it" candidate for you all.
Third base coach Demarlo Hale, in the Red Sox dugout Tuesday night...
I really was trying to come up with an "invisible something" one, but nothing seemed quite right.
Hmm.
The Mariners swept the Red Sox today, winning this afternoon's game in eleven innings, and managing to screw up rush-hour traffic something awful. Ryan Feierabend ("Fear is the mind-killer. Feierabend is the rally-killer.") played to Safeco's strengths and pitched 5 scoreless innings; Matsuzaka pitched 8 innings of one-run ball, and a Sean Green throwing error is what caused the game to be tied at 1-1 for an eternity. In a somewhat appropriate outcome, Ichiro scored the winning run on an RBI double by Jose Lopez... hit off of former Mariners enigma Joel Pineiro.
On a mostly unrelated note, while looking for something else, I found this fantastic article by Michael Lewis about Mark Teahen and Steve Stanley, from two years ago, but still totally worth reading. I say mostly unrelated because the Royals also finished sweeping the Angels this afternoon, causing me to notice that John Buck has been raking lately, so now the question becomes, which Royal is going to be the token KC all-star? Will it be Mark "McDreamy" Teahen, or John "McSteamy" Buck, or Gil "McFourSeamy" Meche?
(don't blame me for those nicknames, blame Royals Review. I've never seen Grey's Anatomy or whatever. I do, however, think that Mark Teahen is dreamy.)
For now, I have another "hey, this picture I took kind of sucks, but let me add a caption to it" candidate for you all.
Third base coach Demarlo Hale, in the Red Sox dugout Tuesday night...
I really was trying to come up with an "invisible something" one, but nothing seemed quite right.
Hmm.
The Mariners swept the Red Sox today, winning this afternoon's game in eleven innings, and managing to screw up rush-hour traffic something awful. Ryan Feierabend ("Fear is the mind-killer. Feierabend is the rally-killer.") played to Safeco's strengths and pitched 5 scoreless innings; Matsuzaka pitched 8 innings of one-run ball, and a Sean Green throwing error is what caused the game to be tied at 1-1 for an eternity. In a somewhat appropriate outcome, Ichiro scored the winning run on an RBI double by Jose Lopez... hit off of former Mariners enigma Joel Pineiro.
On a mostly unrelated note, while looking for something else, I found this fantastic article by Michael Lewis about Mark Teahen and Steve Stanley, from two years ago, but still totally worth reading. I say mostly unrelated because the Royals also finished sweeping the Angels this afternoon, causing me to notice that John Buck has been raking lately, so now the question becomes, which Royal is going to be the token KC all-star? Will it be Mark "McDreamy" Teahen, or John "McSteamy" Buck, or Gil "McFourSeamy" Meche?
(don't blame me for those nicknames, blame Royals Review. I've never seen Grey's Anatomy or whatever. I do, however, think that Mark Teahen is dreamy.)
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Game Report: Mariners vs. Red Sox - Play That Funky Music, Scrappy White Boy
Wow. Was that a crazy game or what?
Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.
- Willie Bloomquist hit a home run!
- Richie Sexson hit a home run!
- Johjima had an RBI on a hit-by-pitch...
- immediately before Guillen also had an RBI on a walk...
- ...and so did Beltre...
- John Olerud threw out the ceremonial first pitch!
- Brandon Morrow struck out some people
- Sherrill struck out Big Papi
- JJ Putz struck out the other half of the team, including a pinch-hitting Manny Ramirez for the final out of the game
Poor Kason Gabbard. According to Baseball-Reference, Willie Bloomquist has only hit 6 career home runs, and counting Gabbard, 5 were against left-handers.
Two of my friends came and visited with me in the 6th inning, right about when Felix got taken out. We chatted for a while, and then they said "Well, it's tied, and last time we got up and walked around, a Mariner hit a home run, so we're going to go." Two batters later, Richie Sexson hit a home run, which brought the score to 8-6. You see, it's not all my luck, though this game did bring my personal Mariners won-loss record this year to 12-4.
This was also my first time seeing Hideki Okajima pitch since last year's Japan Series, which is where I fell in love with him, so I was psyched about that, and even wore my Fighters cap for the occasion. He gave up a single to Kenji Johjima, and before you ask, I don't think they faced each other much in Japan if ever. (Okajima was in the Central League with the Giants for most of his career before coming to the Fighters in 2006, Johjima was in the Pacific League with the Hawks for most of his career before coming to the Mariners in 2006. Interleague started in 2005, but I'd have to poke around a bit for whether or not they faced each other. If you're curious and don't know already, Johjima has faced Matsuzaka more than any of the other current Japanese major leaguers.)
There was a girl on the bus home who was wearing a Red Sox shirt and going on about some Sox player she used to like. "You know... that one with the beard, and shaggy hair, the caveman one? Damion something?" I didn't punch her, but maybe I should have. It's funny, Red Sox fans were kind of fun a few years ago, but now they mostly get on my nerves.
On the other side of the bus, a guy was singing to his kid "You've been Thunderstruck out, struck out by JJ Putz! ThunderSTRIKE THREE", and stuff like that. It was pretty funny.
As is typical when I can't think of anything to write, I'll just put up a few pictures I took today instead...
It's portrait day in the bullpen, starting with Mr. Hyphenated Aussie, Ryan Rowland-Smith.
Chris Reitsma hangs out in the bullpen too.
Jon Huber always looks like a sad panda.
Felix clears his mind during the anthem.
I'm sorry, Mr. Gabbard, but you just aren't that scary.
C is for Catcher and that's good enough for me.
Hey, I know that guy. Didn't he used to play for the Mariners?
Hey keed, don't you mess with the Big Papi.
Kason and Jason. Varitek is humbly pointing out that Gabbard
may want to actually, you know, throw a strike one of these years.
Jose Lopez makes an awesome diving catch of a Lowell liner.
Hideki Okajima! Yay!
Oh yeah, and Brandon Morrow was rookie of the day.
I had fun taking pictures in the bullpen before the game, hanging out with Bretticus and Etowncoug from LL, showing off the bullpen pub view and stuff like that, but I also missed John Olerud throwing out the first pitch, so that was sad. Olerud's one of my favorite players ever, in case it wasn't obvious from the sappy message I put when I sponsored his baseball-reference page. It's hard to believe he's not even 39 yet, though it feels like he's been gone a while.
On the other hand, it was pretty funny when Brett yelled to Joel Pineiro, "I hope we see you pitch today!"
Seriously, this was a pretty good game to experience, lots of action going on at all times, without an obvious outcome either way, but it's hard for me to add to the box score. I can tell you that I thought it was funny how the seventh inning stretch started at about 9:45pm, when the last games I'd gone to were both over by that point.
Oh yeah, so my next game is going to be on Saturday -- it's trading card night -- if anyone else is going and wants to try to work out some trades in advance, let me know! I never seem to have time to actually make a complete set, sadly.
Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.
- Willie Bloomquist hit a home run!
- Richie Sexson hit a home run!
- Johjima had an RBI on a hit-by-pitch...
- immediately before Guillen also had an RBI on a walk...
- ...and so did Beltre...
- John Olerud threw out the ceremonial first pitch!
- Brandon Morrow struck out some people
- Sherrill struck out Big Papi
- JJ Putz struck out the other half of the team, including a pinch-hitting Manny Ramirez for the final out of the game
Poor Kason Gabbard. According to Baseball-Reference, Willie Bloomquist has only hit 6 career home runs, and counting Gabbard, 5 were against left-handers.
Two of my friends came and visited with me in the 6th inning, right about when Felix got taken out. We chatted for a while, and then they said "Well, it's tied, and last time we got up and walked around, a Mariner hit a home run, so we're going to go." Two batters later, Richie Sexson hit a home run, which brought the score to 8-6. You see, it's not all my luck, though this game did bring my personal Mariners won-loss record this year to 12-4.
This was also my first time seeing Hideki Okajima pitch since last year's Japan Series, which is where I fell in love with him, so I was psyched about that, and even wore my Fighters cap for the occasion. He gave up a single to Kenji Johjima, and before you ask, I don't think they faced each other much in Japan if ever. (Okajima was in the Central League with the Giants for most of his career before coming to the Fighters in 2006, Johjima was in the Pacific League with the Hawks for most of his career before coming to the Mariners in 2006. Interleague started in 2005, but I'd have to poke around a bit for whether or not they faced each other. If you're curious and don't know already, Johjima has faced Matsuzaka more than any of the other current Japanese major leaguers.)
There was a girl on the bus home who was wearing a Red Sox shirt and going on about some Sox player she used to like. "You know... that one with the beard, and shaggy hair, the caveman one? Damion something?" I didn't punch her, but maybe I should have. It's funny, Red Sox fans were kind of fun a few years ago, but now they mostly get on my nerves.
On the other side of the bus, a guy was singing to his kid "You've been Thunderstruck out, struck out by JJ Putz! ThunderSTRIKE THREE", and stuff like that. It was pretty funny.
As is typical when I can't think of anything to write, I'll just put up a few pictures I took today instead...
It's portrait day in the bullpen, starting with Mr. Hyphenated Aussie, Ryan Rowland-Smith.
Chris Reitsma hangs out in the bullpen too.
Jon Huber always looks like a sad panda.
Felix clears his mind during the anthem.
I'm sorry, Mr. Gabbard, but you just aren't that scary.
C is for Catcher and that's good enough for me.
Hey, I know that guy. Didn't he used to play for the Mariners?
Hey keed, don't you mess with the Big Papi.
Kason and Jason. Varitek is humbly pointing out that Gabbard
may want to actually, you know, throw a strike one of these years.
Jose Lopez makes an awesome diving catch of a Lowell liner.
Hideki Okajima! Yay!
Oh yeah, and Brandon Morrow was rookie of the day.
I had fun taking pictures in the bullpen before the game, hanging out with Bretticus and Etowncoug from LL, showing off the bullpen pub view and stuff like that, but I also missed John Olerud throwing out the first pitch, so that was sad. Olerud's one of my favorite players ever, in case it wasn't obvious from the sappy message I put when I sponsored his baseball-reference page. It's hard to believe he's not even 39 yet, though it feels like he's been gone a while.
On the other hand, it was pretty funny when Brett yelled to Joel Pineiro, "I hope we see you pitch today!"
Seriously, this was a pretty good game to experience, lots of action going on at all times, without an obvious outcome either way, but it's hard for me to add to the box score. I can tell you that I thought it was funny how the seventh inning stretch started at about 9:45pm, when the last games I'd gone to were both over by that point.
Oh yeah, so my next game is going to be on Saturday -- it's trading card night -- if anyone else is going and wants to try to work out some trades in advance, let me know! I never seem to have time to actually make a complete set, sadly.
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