8-22-25
It was another Free Weekend on MLB.TV. We know that that means: lots of the baseball tonight. If work suffers, so be it. First up was the Rockies at the Pirates. The Rockies announcer was reading lineup and mentioned Nick Gonzales was a first round draft pick from New Mexico State. (Warmed my heart.) Nick got a hit and was driven in by Andrew McCutchen.
To give you an idea about how the Rockies are doing, the Rockies announcers spent a lot of time talking about Pittsburgh. (And it’s not like the Pirates are doing well, either.) Clint Hurdle, the Rockies current manager, was the last successful Pirates’ manager. The crowd there still loves him. The Rockies’ color guy grew up in Pittsburgh. He understands the desperate desire for a winner there. It wasn’t much of a game on the Rockies’ behalf. The Pirates won 9-0. I did see Nick and catcher Henry Davis, a fellow first rounder, team up to catch a runner stealing.
The Nationals were at the Phillies. The Nats now have a sleeve sponsorship from AARP. I’m sure the Philly fans found that amusing and let them know about it. The Phillies new closer, Jhoan Duran (gotta love the alliteration on that name), came in with a one run lead. There was a whole ceremony with the stadium lights going out and just lights coming on in the stands. The music plays. The video board shows the graphics. And he blows the save and loses game, 5-4. Booo!!
Meanwhile in Baltimore at the Orioles and the Astros’ game, the O’s broadcasters were showing off their Boog’s BBQ sandwiches. Yikes! They were huge and gorgeous looking. The guys estimated they were 2 lbs. of meat each and needless to say, they’d sold out at the stand. The field reporter came on and wondered where his was. They said come on up, they had plenty to share.
The big O’s news was that they’d just given a huge 8-year contract to a rookie catcher, Samuel Basallo, who’d only played a couple of games in the bigs. Umm . . . What about Adley Rutchman? He’s injured and probably out for the year (and probably going to be traded). Astros win 10-7.
The Red Sox at the Yankees was scoreless until the seventh. I tuned as the Red Sox scored. That one run held up. Aroldis Chapman came in for the save and left Aaron Judge standing on deck. 1-0 Red Sox.
In Arlington, the Rangers were down 3-2 in the bottom of the ninth to the Indians. Wyatt Langford led off with a hustle double. On the next pitch, Corey Seager doubled him in. On the next pitch, Joc Pederson doubled him in. Rangers win, 4-3. It was literally that quick. The Indians didn’t even get an out. They’re are still trying to find a closer after losing Emmanuel Clase to that betting scandal.
More late inning dramatics. The Brewers blew the save in top of ninth to the Giants on a “run thrown in” wild pitch that brought in the tying run from third. No problem. William Contreras hit a massive home run in the bottom to win it, 4-3. In the postgame interview, William was speaking incredibly fast in Spanish. I was impressed that the blonde field reporter was apparently fluent and could keep up with him.
I checked out the Chihuahuas at the Rivercats. Not because it was a close game, it was 12-0 Chihuahuas in the sixth, but rather because there was a no hitter alert on game. Jackson Wolf was pitching for the pups. Broadcaster Tim Hagerty sounded intense on the game call. He was talking about the no-no, heedless of the Broadcaster’s Jinx. Wolf lost it on a hit to the first batter in the eighth. It was a great effort, though.
The Rivercats threw out a position player to pitch in the top of ninth. Tim called it, “Throwing in the towel.” This player hit Tim Locastro. The two know each other and were smiling afterward. The guy pitched a scoreless inning. The Chihuahuas win, 12-1, and are a half game out of first.
The Padres were up, 2-1, over the Dodgers at a controlled riot in Petco Park. The San Diego fans were going crazy. In the ninth, Shohei Ohtani gave one a ride to center, but it was just a long first out. The second out was a strikeout. Padres’ play-by-play guy Tony Gwen Jr. called it, “That was a fastball middle-middle, but he was tardy to the party.”
Mookie Betts did get on. Freddie Freeman came up and was serenaded with a Tomahawk Chop chant, but he singled Betts to third. Finally, Robert Suarez struck out Teoscar Hernandez to end it, 2-1 Padres. The crowd was chanting, “Beat LA!” The Padres were now tied for the NL West lead, after they got swept by Dodgers last week in LA. Lastly, the Mariner’s beat the A’s, 3-2. The A’s left the bases loaded in the ninth with 1 out. Lots of drama tonight.
8-23-25
I got home from Aggie Volleyball and tuned into the Indians versus Rangers on the radio. It turned into Ranger batting practice. Cody Freeman hit his first MLB home run for Rangers to make it 2-0 in the second. Josh Jung hit a three-run homer to make it 5-0 in the third. Ezekiel Duran had a two-run double in the fourth, 7-0. Adolis Garcia snuck in a two-run homer to make it, 9-0 in the fifth.
On the mound, Jack Leiter was having a great performance with 10 strikeouts through 7 innings of work. 10-0 Rangers was the final in a tidy 2 hour, 11 minute game. The Indians had a highlight in Steven Kwan stealing a double away from Freeman at the wall in left.
I finally got to see another NASCAR Cup Race this year. It’s The Whatever They’re Calling It 400 at Daytona. (Is it still the Pepsi 400? I wasn’t paying attention.) The prerace was amusing. Tyler Reddick was driving the McDonald Land car and was dressed in a Ronald McDonald firesuit. He had more pressing issues to worry about. Him and Alex Bowman were the last two potential entries into the playoffs and this would be the final race to decide it.
The Big One happened with 8 to go in first stage. Bubba “Noose” Wallace was maybe the instigator and was knocked out of the race along with 6 other cars, including Bowman. Reddick was in a wreck before that, but still in the race.
Cody Ware was leading most of Stage 2. Who? Road course specialist Shane Van Ginsberg then got the lead, but Ross Chastain won the stage. Joey Logano led much of the third stage. With 13 laps to go, Logano had an aero disrupted spin. He didn’t hit anything, but it took him out of the race. Ryan Blaney was the shock winner coming from 13-th to first in two laps. It was four across the line with a couple other guys behind him trying to win to get in playoffs. Bowman and Reddick made it in. Yeah, that race ending was pressure packed for me for a different reason, as we’ll see.
College Football season started off this weekend with some random match ups. There were a couple of games on TV Saturday night. One was Southern versus NC Central. This would only be interesting if there was a battle of bands at halftime, which there was actually. NCC won the game, though. Stanford at Hawaii was the other game that I was more interested in. The Rainbow Warriors are still playing at a large high school stadium. Hawaii had issues before the big fire.
In the first quarter, Stanford got a field goal. Hawaii then made a fair catch on the kick off at their own 1. This led to a sack in endzone and a fumble for a Stanford TD. Hawaii came back with a nice touchdown pass and they blocked a field goal. Stanford did convert on another field goal chance, but Hawaii got the ball back with 3 minutes left in the half and scored a second touchdown. 14-13 Hawaii at the half.
I got distracted for the third and most of the fourth quarter by the race. Unfortunately, both events finished at the exact same time. I mostly picked the race, but kept flipping back and forth. At the football game, it was 20-20 with 1:30 left. Hawaii had the ball, but their quarterback was out on the field on a leg and a half and could barely move. He got them into field goal range. The team had a Japanese kicker, who’d learned the skill from watching Youtube video, but he got it done. 23-20 Hawaii wins.
On the radio, the Chihuahuas were facing the Rivercats. After six scoreless innings, I wasn’t entirely paying much attention. Randy Vasquez was making a rehab start for the Padres and gave the pups 6 shutout innings. Luis Campusano broke it open with a 400+’ home run. Tirso Ornelas also homered to make it 2-0 in the seventh. However, RC did score in the bottom.
In the ninth, the Chihuahuas scored on a wild pitch to make it, 3-1. Ron Marinaccio came in to close. He gave up a home run to start the inning. With no outs and another runner on, Marinaccio was called for a balk and the runner went to second and the pitcher was unnerved. He got a fly ball out, but a double brought in the tying run. The stadium lights went off thinking it was a home run. The bases were loaded with the winning run at third, but they were all left there.
In the tenth, the RC pitcher was called for a balk trying for a pickoff, but the pups didn’t score. In the bottom, RC moved the automatic runner to third. Two Chihuahuas outfielders brought in as infielders and it worked. RC had 2 outs and 2 on, but didn’t score.
In the 11-th, the fans were getting antsy for their fireworks. Even with no scoring for six innings, two extra innings have dragged this game out. The Chihuahuas scored on a single by Yonathan Perlaza, though the runner nearly missed the plate coming in. It was 4-3, but in the bottom RC sac’d in a run and then a single drove in the winning run, 5-4 Rivercats. The Chihuahuas drop to a game and a half out of first and lowered my spirits with that loss.
8-24-25
I woke up late and didn’t really wake up for the rest of the day. I started listening to the Rangers playing the Indians at noon. No one had scored by the time I left for dad’s apartment to watch the Little League World Series between Nevada and Taiwan. I kind of wish I hadn’t gone, since I wasn’t into it. Maybe I’d had too much sports yesterday. The game wasn’t good either. Taiwan won in a runaway.
I didn’t try listening to the Ranger game while I was there. Disappointingly, the MLB.TV free weekend wasn’t available on Amazon Prime to watch it. I got home just in time to hear the postgame begin. The Rangers won 5-0. That was a sweep of the Indians. I flipped over to the Chihuahuas versus the Rivercats already in progress. They were in the fifth and pups were up big.
I took off for the mall to get an early dinner. It was a questionable decision and so was the hot dog I got at Deputy Dawgs. Such nice people there, but even a bacon-wrapped Nathan’s dog wasn’t that great. I got back home in the top of the seventh. The Chihuahuas were still running up the score and had a 12-batter inning. The best play by the Rivercats was a foul catch by a fan with a glove keeping a scorecard. Broadcaster Tim Hagerty was impressed and the fans gave him a smattering of applause.
In the ninth, the Chihuahuas hit their sixth home run of the game. In the bottom, the Rivercats scored and loaded the bases. Tim tried to work out the threat level, but the score was so lopsided, he couldn’t do the math on it. “Hey, it’s been a long game at the end of the 13-game road trip.” The Chihuahuas win 16-5. They went 2 and 4 in this series: two blowout wins and four one-run losses. There’s a big series coming up this week with the team they are chasing for the league lead.
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