Tuesday, September 3, 2019

Baseball Journal August 2019 Part 3 and Labor Day

I’m going to be the first to admit that I haven’t really been covering most of the Chihuahuas games I’ve been listening to this season.  It’s been very dramatic this last week with the tight race for the playoffs.  Here’s just some quick hits with a few other sports mixed in.

8-27-19
The Chihuahuas won a late night game after an hour hail delay in El Paso!  There was some dithering about starting the game as the overcast cloud cover and radar weren’t promising.  While I was waiting, I tried to get into the free MLB.TV day, where all the games were available.  Unfortunately, unlike the last time (7-12-19), most of the games were blowouts.  The teams I was most interested in were on late and audio-only, which conflicted with the Chihuahuas’ broadcast.  I did get to hear Jon Miller doing a Giants game, but only the bottom of the ninth.

8-28-19
12 batters, 9 runs, 9 hits in a row.  That was a busy inning for the Chihuahuas on their way to another win.  Michael Gettys also set the team season record for home runs with 31.

8-29-19
The Chihuahuas dropped their last home game, losing it in the ninth with a one-run lead.  Las Vegas also lost, so the pups didn’t lose any ground.  They are two games back with four games left.

8-31-19
The Chihuahuas got a big win at Sacramento, 3-0.  They were facing Johnny Cueto on rehab, who I’ve seen pitch in-person (5-29-16).  This time, the pups’ pitching was up to the task.  After six scoreless innings, the Chihuahuas scored and held on.  Las Vegas lost, so the Chihuahuas are now one game back.

I attempted to watch the NASCAR Xfinity race at Darlington, but my reception of NBC today was suboptimal.  NBC was passing tomorrow’s Southern 500 off to cable so that I couldn’t watch altogether.  Dale Earnhardt Jr. was in the race after being in a plane crash two weeks ago.  Frustratingly, reception only cleared up just before the end.  Denny Hamlin won, but his car failed inspection and he was stripped of the win, as he was not racing for points in this series.  Junior finished in sixth.  He seemed in very good spirits, though he said after that his crash injuries caught up with him about halfway through the race.  He was a trooper here.
 
9-1-19
I’m not sure how much sports writing I’m going to be doing outside of Aggie games this month.  I’m going to go ahead post Labor Day weekend here with the end of August, instead of doing a September post.

While listening to the Rangers’ game in the afternoon, Jared Sandler broke into the guys’ commentary to give play-by-play of Justin Verlander getting Bo Bichette to ground out for his third career no-hitter.  Even though he’s an Astro, the Rangers announcers were impressed.  I was also watching a Rays game on a Mexican station and they showed the highlight as well.

The Chihuahuas were shutout on a bullpen day for the Rivercats.  Possibly not coincidentally, Travis Jankowski was called up.  The pups have lost too much of their great lineup and the pitching is as poor as ever.  Their only hope was that the Aviators lost later in the night. 
   
9-2-19 Labor Day
And, we’re disappointed.  When I tuned into the Chihuahuas for this Labor Day afternoon, Tim Hagerty informed us that Las Vegas had won last night thus winning the division.  Just to make my life needlessly difficult, the Rangers/Yankees game that I’d tuned in on the radio this morning was in a rain delay that lasted until the Chihuahuas game started.  Great.  My last opportunity to hear the pups this season crossed with one of my last chances to hear the Rangers this season.  (Likely most of the rest of their weekend games will be preempted by football.) 

Not to mention, the whole time I was watching the NHRA US Nationals at Indianapolis.  The last couple of times that I meant to watch this event, I was at a Chihuahuas game (9-3-18 and 9-5-16).  Yet another disappointment was Leah Pritchett being eliminated in the first round again.  It wasn’t even live; it had happened earlier in the morning.  How am I supposed to develop an unhealthy obsession with Leah if I don’t get to see her race?  I only got to see her featured in a commercial.  That was it.  

That said, I did enjoy the rest of the coverage.  John Force won in Funny Cars.  His insane ranting post-race interview alone would have been worth the price of admission.  He walked away from the microphone saying, “Boy, I screwed that interview up!”  The Top Fuel final featured both cars blowing their engines.  They had to coast over the finish line (at over 250-mph).    

Meanwhile, I settled on trying to listen to both baseball games and came away with feeling like I hadn’t listened to either.  After a three-hour delay, the Rangers beat the Yankees 7-0.  Mike Minor pitched seven shutout innings for the win.  I did hear Delino DeShields hitting a monster three-run homer.  But the story was that this was the first time since last June that the Yankees had been shutout.  That was 220 games!  It made the bottom of the ninth more exciting with something on the line in spite of the lopsided score. 

The Chihuahuas lost 8-4.  They’d led for much of the game, but gave up a big inning late.  Tim sounded much more relaxed and conversational during the coverage.  For the last week, he’d been explaining playoff scenario tiebreakers constantly.  He got a bit emotional in the postgame talking about the games following the El Paso Wal-Mart shooting.  I’ll save the post-season stats for a Chihuahuas’ season recap.  Their opponent today, the Sacramento Rivercats, are going on to the playoffs.  Before the game, their players were out in uniform greeting the fans as they came in.  That’s a nice tradition for the last home game of the year.  This was the last game of the Triple-A regular season.  Every other game of the day was already done.      

Later in the evening, KOA out of Denver was coming in decently, so I was able to listen to the Rockies versus the Dodgers.  Boy, are the Rockies inexplicably bad this year.  I guess it’s their pitching, but even the armless Padres are ahead of them in the standings.  The game was a 16-9 Dodger victory that was not even that close and it dragged out terribly.

The Rockies’ announcers appreciated the Dodger organist, Dieter Ruehle, and his sense of humor, playing the Gilligan’s Island theme at the three-hour mark.  Unfortunately, it blew right past that to go over four hours.  There were delays for an injured umpire, an injured Joc Pederson (robbing Charlie Blackmon of a home run), and various pitching changes.  The announcers were horrified by a combined 11 home runs in a pitcher’s park that is Dodger Stadium.  Ian Desmond for the Rockies had a good game.  He pitched a scoreless eighth, when the game wasn’t in doubt, and put the ball in his back pocket.  He then hit a home run in the ninth. 

I finished by Labor Day Weekend watching the end of a classic Godzilla film festival on Comet.  Why not?  Our longtime talk radio station here in Las Cruces finally dumped their recent Spanish music format change and went back to talk this weekend.  I think this means I’m living in the United States again, at least for the moment.

Food-wise, Dad bought and shared a Papa John’s pizza with me on Sunday.  I used a two-for-one coupon at Barnes & Noble for a pair of salted caramel toffee cookies for dessert.  (Dad didn’t like his.)  I put some bacon on my Monday leftover slices.  That worked surprisingly well.  In a fit of indulgence later, I walked over and bought a cup of pistachio froyo with cheesecake chunks at Orange Leaf.  It was overpriced and I shouldn’t have done it, but it was very tasty mistake.  I didn’t work on my fiction story all weekend, so that was a poor use of my time.  On the other hand, this was the most restful time off from work I’ve had all year. 

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