8-1-2016
Trade deadline day, but the on-field action also continues. The Chihuahuas come from behind to lose,
10-7, to the 51’s. Jabari Blash was
called up, but the team doesn’t seem to be missing much on offense. The Rangers were idle today, awaiting their
reinforcements. The Astros won in 14
innings, 2-1, thanks to a walk-off by Carlos Correa. I was watching the Yankees vs Mets on ESPN,
but managed to completely miss the end of the game and the score. (It was 6-5, Yankees over Mets. It was a good game.)
8-2-16
The Rangers start a series in Baltimore with their new
acquisitions. Darvish allows three solo
home runs before being chased from the game.
As I read later, on all three homers, Darvish had shaken off his new
catcher Jonathan Lucroy. The real
problem in this game though was that the team again left their bats in
Arlington. Rangers lose 5-1. Fire the equipment manager. I was watching this game on Yahoo again and,
in spite of the outcome, I was so glad I did.
Ruggie’s at bat in 9th had me rolling. I saw him sniff his bat and then he hit
himself on his helmet with his bat after a bad swing.
So much for my prediction of the Rockies coming out of
nowhere to win the NL West. The day
after I posted it, Trevor Story tears a ligament on his thumb and is out for
the season. I don’t suppose they’ve got
another super-powered rookie somewhere in the minors.
8-3-16
Giants vs Phillies.
I’m watching the game on Yahoo, but you could tell where you were just
by listening. “Hey Span, we all know
Nunez should be batting leadoff!” That
is truly excellent opposition research by the Philly fans. The crowd mic kept fading in and out as the
hecklers got more vocal, and the production director had to avoid some
interesting language. Yeah, those full
houses, happy fans, and winning teams were just an aberration in
Philadelphia. (Actually, I remember a
laser pointer incident in that era.)
The Giants go up 4-0 for most of the game. Johnny Cueto goes 7 2/3 innings with 10 k’s,
but gives up 4 runs late, tying the game.
Even with some recently acquired bullpen help, Bochy seemed very
reluctant to use them and left Cueto in too long. It ends up being a 5-4 loss for the Giants in
the 12th inning. There was an
error right before the winning hit, which made it even worse. I admit I did like the Liberty Bell sound
effect on home runs and after the win.
The Rangers lose again to the O’s 3-2. The new guys, Carlos Beltran and Lucroy,
drive in both runs for Texas. That, at
least, is a good sign.
You can guess what kind of game the Chihuahuas are having
when a position player is pitching for them in the 9th. (And can you believe they were still calling
infield shifts. For the last batter,
they put four players on the right side, nobody on the left. It worked.
Nobody scored in the 9th at least.) It was a 9-2 a-kicking courtesy of the Tacoma
Rainiers. This included an
inside-the-park home run by Tacoma, because they got bored trotting around the
bases to score.
Royals’
clubhouse fractious and divided because of Dungeons and Dragons. I’m still half-convinced this is a late April
Fool’s gag. Seldom, if ever, do D&D
and baseball ever come up in the same post on this blog. These two pastimes never crossover for me . .
. until now. I’m really having a hard
time imaging this bunch of World Series winners sitting down to roll dice and
kill Orcs, with their skipper, Ned Yost, as the DM no less. But, there’s way too many details to dismiss
this as some Kansas City nerd’s fan-fiction.
I can totally believe Hosmer would roll up a Half-Elf Ranger. (On the Eight Game Master Alignments scale,
Yost seems to be an Enabler Fudge.) Oh,
for a video of these proceedings. Name
your price. I will pay.
8-4-16
The Rangers finally beat the O’s 5-3. Beltran and Lucroy again drove in runs. It took an extra inning, but the Giants
finally beat the Phillies on a walk-off by Denard Span.
At the beginning of the game, Tim speculated that tonight’s
game between the Chihuahuas and Rainiers might be high-scoring. As the dogs were down 10-4 in the 7th,
that seemed to be true. By the end of
the 7th, it was 10-10, and the final Chihuahua out was thrown out at
home with the go-ahead run. (It was a
mirror image of that game in April vs the Zephers.) In the top of the 8th, the
Rainiers bat around and scored 6 more runs.
It wasn’t over. The Chihuahuas
managed to score 5 more runs before running out of outs in the 9th. Clearly the team has not had all of their
best hitters called up. Final, 16-15
Tacoma Rainiers. The El Paso fans didn’t
get to see a win, but got their money’s worth.
8-5-16
After losing four in a row, the Chihuahuas needed a win
tonight. Unfortunately, their last two
series have been against two good teams.
There was a small amount of fratricide within the Tacoma team as a
player in the dugout got hit by a foul ball by another one of their players in
the 1st. After a brief trip
to the clubhouse, the injured player came back wearing a trash can lid. Only in baseball. The game itself was quite serious as the lead
changed hands six times over 9 innings.
The dogs would prevail 7-5.
The MLB Network game featured the Giants losing again, this
time to the Washington Nationals, 5-1.
When am I going to see these guys win again? I was surprised to see the Nationals’ closer
was Mark Melancon. He was on the Pirates
last time I looked, though the subject of trade rumors. I guess they were right, and I don’t know how
I missed that one. I didn’t realize the
Pirates had totally given up on this season.
The Rangers lose 5-0 to the Astros tonight. Looking over the Rangers’ lineup, I don’t
think they had their best guys out against Keuchel. (Yeah, I know he’s a lefty and you’re supposed
to sit your lefties, but still.) Or
could it have been Astros
Girl? I don’t even if she was there,
but I just saw this story today about her appearance at the Tuesday night game
versus the Blue Jays. Essentially, what
we have here is a hot chick in homemade team gear cheering behind home
plate. She caused an Internet sensation
as the camera just sort of gravitated towards her. She said she was hoping to distract the
opposition, but unfortunately it didn’t work as the Astros lost. Afterward, Astros Girl got a text from a
friend reporting her newfound fame, “Hey, you’re famous in Canada!”
8-6-16
I was surprised that KOA out of Denver was my strongest
radio station as the sun went down. I
picked up the Rockies vs the Marlins in the 7th with the Rockies
already up big. In spite of the score,
it took forever for the Rox to finally put the fish away, 12-6. I asked if they had any more rookies to step
in for the injured Trevor Story. His
name is David Dahl. I don’t know much
about him, but he’s hitting well, including three today. DJ LeMahieu made a great play to get the
final out, on DJ LeMahieu Ghostbuster Bobblehead night, no less. (Yes, I’m jealous, even with my Cody Decker
Bobblehead.)
The main reason I was listening was actually because of the
Marlins. Ichiro Suzuki is still two hits
shy of 3,000, which is where I left him the last time I saw him last week. They’ve been holding him out of the lineup on
their current roadtrip, but put him in to pitch hit in the 8th and
he delivered. He came up again in the 9th
to an ovation, but grounded out to the pitcher.
There was a slight delay afterward.
All of the balls for his at bats are specially marked and are taken out
of play after. Meanwhile, 65 members of
the Japanese media get to enjoy the Mile-high city for another day. Oh, and Stanton hit a 495ft home run or a
500+ft home run, depending on the contested measurement. Whatever, it was very long.
The Rangers game must have started earlier than the listed
time. It just finished as I tuned
in. At least they won 3-2 over the
Astros. Again, Beltran and Lucroy
contributed to the victory. No word on
whether Astros Girl was there.
I listened to the first part of the Chihuahuas game, but
wasn’t getting good signal. The dogs
made a game of it, but couldn’t overcome a big deficit and lost 7-5 to the
Rainiers. Every time I hear the name of
Tacoma’s manager, I keep remembering his nickname when he played with the
Diablos, “Lightning” Pat Listach.
8-7-16
Rangers vs Astros. It
was 1-0 through 7 innings. In the 5th,
Lucroy drove in Ruggie on first base on a hit and run. Meanwhile, Yu Darvish pitched 7 scoreless
innings with 8 strikeouts and no walks. You
could hear a legion of Rangers fans cheering at the park in Houston. From here, things got interesting.
The Rangers tacked on a couple of runs in the 8th,
but so did the Astros, 3-2. In the top
of the 9th, the Rangers loaded the bases with no outs, but failed to
score. In the bottom, the Astros
scratched out a run off Sam Dyson to tie it.
In the 10th, the Rangers again loaded the bases with one out
and did not score, but would score two in the 11th. On the mound, Matt Bush pitched both extra
innings. While there were two on in the
11th for the Astros, Bush ended the game with a strikeout. 5-3 Rangers.
With that loss the Astros fall to third in the division. The Rangers are up by 7 on the Mariners.
When I tried listening yesterday, I didn’t hear Matt Hicks on
the broadcast. We don’t get the
pre-game, so I didn’t the story as to why he wasn’t there for the weekend. Apparently, he was on a honeymoon in El Paso,
and entering the El Paso Sports Hall of Fame as a broadcaster. Congratulations, Matt! I just love being able to hear him again
daily, like I used to listening to Diablos games.
The Chihuahuas were not on at their scheduled time. Normally if there’s a delay, Tim comes on for
a minute to say why, but not this time.
Frankly, this screwed up my oh-so-busy evening. He came on, after about an hour, and
apologized. It was another missing
equipment delay. How does this keep
happening?
I went ahead and listened to ESPN Radio programming in the
intervening interval. We just lost our
local Fox Sports Radio affiliate to Oldies programming. This happened last year too, when they went
to the Oldies Country format, so I wonder if this will last. I’d just about stopped listening to them
anyway. One, they just about only talk
about the NFL and the NBA. They might
break down international soccer the Olympics a little bit, just to irritate
me. Two, their only other major topic
was liberal political agenda stuff. Jay
Mohr, for example, who was a middle-aged, white comedian, married to Nikki Cox
with a couple of kids, suddenly turned into a radical black activist, who took
every sports story personally as a reason to agitate for social justice. Jason Smith, who I had been really enjoying
last year since he talked about baseball a lot (okay, really just the Mets),
suddenly stopped and started breaking down the Republican and Democrat
conventions and how stupid Trump is and how great Hilary is. The other hosts weren’t any better, if not
worse. Maybe I wasn’t the only person to
stop listening.
ESPN Radio, for a change, was talking baseball. Granted, this was only because the football
Hall of Fame game was cancelled this evening, and there were a couple of
interesting baseball stories today. Alex
Rodriguez announced his retirement at the end of the week. (This right after Mark Teixeira also
announced his retirement from the Yankees last week.) Surprisingly, this didn’t come up during the
4+ hours of the Rangers game. (Or maybe
not. Perhaps they’re still sore about
his contract.)
I found about it watching the Univision sports show, Republica Deportiva. (I like one of the women hosts of the
show. I don’t care about Mexican league
soccer.) ESPN Radio had Raul Ibanez on
talk about A-Rod, who had nothing but glowing things to say about him as a
teammate. I didn’t like Raul as a player
(he was always on a team playing against a team I was rooting for), but he’s
been a very articulate commentator in retirement. Seeing Alex trying not to breakdown down
during his press conference, I admit to feeling some sympathy for him. (Tex also got choked up.) Much like Bonds, the guy easily had the
credentials to get into the Hall of Fame before he started using PED’s, and
pretty much wrecked his career and reputation from there.
Raul was also a teammate of the other ball player in the
news, Ichiro Suzuki. He got his 3,000th
hit this afternoon in Colorado. (They
did mention this on the Rangers broadcast.)
The Marlins could have held him out for a day, since they were going
back to Miami tomorrow, but started him today anyway. Maybe this getting to be a distraction for
team that’s contending and they wanted it over with. The fish win, 10-7, over the Rockies.
So eventually, the Chihuahuas game came on. Their opponents were the Fresno
Grizzlies. Tim sounded a little out of
sorts to start the game and the players were maybe a bit listless too, all
owing to the late start. You could hear
some periodic barking in background for “Bark at the Park.” At least the four-legged fans were into
it.
This was a bad night to start an hour late. After the game, the team was doing a special
showing of Pitch, a new show about a
girl pitching for the Padres. (Actually,
they could have shown it during the delay.)
I’d like to say something nice about a baseball-themed show on network
television, but it’s likely to just be a short-lived, agenda-driven piece of
drivel. Given how the Padres’ pitching
is this season, it will also illicit a lot of unwanted, obvious jokes at their
expense. No word from Tim about showing
that TV show that I heard, but they mentioned it on the TV news yesterday.
Until the 9th, the score was 1-0. My reception was again poor, so I was missing
some details. The Chihuahuas haven’t
scored on Fresno pitcher, Chapman, for like 19 straight innings. Tonight was no exception. The Grizzlies’ closer was another
matter. The dogs managed to score a
tying run in their last inning. The
bases were then loaded, but the pups weren’t able to win it there. In the 10th, a two-run homer for
the Grizzlies would turn out to be the game-winner. Fresno wins 3-1.
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