The final night of Major League Baseball’s regular season was ridiculous, absurd, impossible, unbelievable, indescribable. Thanks to a win earlier in the evening by the St. Louis Cardinals, the Atlanta Braves needed a win to force a one-game playoff for the NL wild card that they once seemed certain to win (having led by 10 1/2 games in late August)…. Read more »
To take the edge off my latest rant against GOP debt-ceiling fanaticism — really, this issue gets me angry like nothing in politics since the emergence of Sarah Palin — here’s a post about a different kind of fanatic: video of the Phillie Phanatic getting hit by a foul ball. Ha! (Hat tip: Jim Kelly. Apologies to Marty West. Well,… Read more »
At Coors Field with Becky & the girls. Awesome seats. UPDATE: Well, that didn’t end well. But we had fun! Highlight: dancing with Loyette to “Heyyy baby! (Ooh! Aah!) I wanna kno-oh-oh-ow! If you’ll be my girl.” Oh, and Loyacita repeatedly sticking her finger in my beer and then licking it off. (#PANIC?)
Bud Selig is reportedly “considering the unusual move of overturning the call at first base on Wednesday in Detroit that cost Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga a perfect game.” The New York Times‘s Tyler Kepner invokes an interesting analogy to make the case that Selig shouldn’t do it: It was not a perfect game. The game continued after Joyce awarded Jason… Read more »
Baseball almost had its third perfect game in a month tonight. Correction: baseball did have its third perfect game in a month tonight, but the record books won’t reflect that fact, because an umpire blew the call on (what should have been) the game’s final play: Armando Galarraga of the Detroit Tigers lost his bid for a perfect game Wednesday… Read more »
In case anyone’s wondering why the blog has gone even deader than usual, it’s because we’re back east, visiting my folks. We had a great time in Boston today — Becky, the girls, my parents and me — including at Fenway Park for the Red Sox-Blue Jays game. We had been worried about rain, but in the end, we got… Read more »
Whatever happens in Indianapolis tonight between Butler and Duke, I think Chicago’s Mark Buehrle has already clinched SportsCenter’s “Top Play” of the day: Last season, he pitched a perfect game. This season, on Opening Day no less, he starts things off with a perfect play. Nice. Meanwhile, I’m pretty sure I know one thing that won’t be a “top play,”… Read more »
Heh: In case you missed it, TBS baseball announcer Chip Caray made, er, a slight mistake in calling a potentially game-deciding play during the 10th inning of last night’s one-game playoff between the Twins and Tigers for the AL Central title: Caray was presumably confused because, normally, a ball on that sort of trajectory to shallow left field would indeed… Read more »
I just got home — a little later than I’d planned — from Coors Field, after watching, in person, “one of the strangest games ever in Denver,” a 14-inning affair that ended in the first walkoff grand slam in Rockies history (and the first grand slam I’ve ever personally witnessed, never mind a 14th-inning walkoff slam), with my Dad. Pretty… Read more »
At one point yesterday, for a minute or two, the top of the countdown box in my blog’s sidebar at right briefly looked like this: I quickly fixed it, and was amused when I realized what the problem was. I had accidentally entered the date of Monday’s Rockies-Giants game at Coors Field — which my Dad and I have tickets… Read more »