Baseball Journal 6-2-13

“Makes for some great baseball, doesn’t it?” Len was commenting on the 40-minute 1st inning between the Cubs and Diamondbacks, which consisted of three walks and two hit batsmen. Jim Deshaies then made his observation, which he followed up later with, “Like being stuck in traffic.” JD seemed to come into his own during an excessively lengthy couple of opening innings, in which you could also toss in a walked in run and a couple of unearned runs. He also dubbed Darwin Barney the “Minister of Defense” for his excellent second base work. About time he got a nickname.

They guys seemed to be breaking out their rain delay material, even though it wasn’t raining. Certainly it was cold, humid, and threatening. There was a long discussion of some Sabermetric stat. I don’t know why the MLB in general seems to be pushing these weird statistics. Nobody outside of the business or not playing fantasy league baseball cares about them. Then there was a discussion about “All in the Family” spinoff series, because Jean Stapleton had recently passed away.

The crowd had its moments of peak interest, but mostly they were huddled up against the cold. There was a large number of the Blackhawks sweaters in the crowd supporting the city’s hockey team, who’s deep in the NHL playoffs. Len and JD mentioned how hard the crew at the United Center was working setting up for three consecutive dates by the Rolling Stones along with the hockey games. As Mick Jagger was quoted, “You’ll be seeing the Stones on ice for the final show.”

Not to say this wasn’t mostly an entertaining ballgame. The commentary was lively while the game was dragging. The action picked up and both teams scored some runs. Then the Cubs remembered they were the Cubs and were beaten badly late, 8–4 in what seemed like much longer than the three and half hours it took to play.

The Dodgers have dropped a couple to the Rockies this weekend. They’ve been devastated by injuries lately (along with being saddled with bad character players and some truly questionable financial decisions). Yesterday, Charley Steiner was reduced to repeating the score from the Giants blowout loss to the Cardinals several times during the broadcast, presumably to keep Dodger fans’ spirits up.

To my unavoidable regret, I was unable to watch all of the Cubs-White Sox games at Wrigley last week. I was startled to see that guy in the Kyle Busch M&M’s jacket who sits behind home plate at Sox games, sitting behind home plate on there on the North Side. I saw the first of Dioneer Navarro’s three home runs while I was watching. The next day they showed his other two before the game. That last one was particularly impressive, going out onto Waveland Avenue. (I loved that fanshot of the kid holding up his fingers to the camera, counting the homers.) During today’s game, I found out Dioneer had retired that bat. He’d actually lost it into the crowd swinging away, got it back from a fan, and then hit that last home run with it.

It was also during that following game that I fell absolutely fell in love with this very hot Asian girl sitting to the third base side off of home plate. She had this short, sassy haircut, pushed back, and just smoldered with every glance. I was rooting on every right-handed batter to extend their at-bats. Unlike the M&M’s man, don’t expect to every see her again. Sigh.