ka-son gab-bard (clap-clap clap-clap-clap)
Any time I'm spending Saturday afternoon lying prone on my couch and feeling like a crack whore because I spent all night reading the last Harry Potter book and the bad ass new god Kason the Super Typo Gabbard is pitching and I have to endure a Fox telecast, it seems like I might as well liveblog:TOP OF THE FIRST
The bullet points on the Fox scouting report for Super Typo read "FINESSE, SCHILLING, MIDDLE INNINGS." Yeah, identifying the pitcher he replaced in the rotation is really the key to scouting his pitching strengths and weaknesses. It's … going to be a long afternoon. Kason induces three ground-outs for a 1-2-3 inning and Fox kidnaps my TV and sends us to the Giants/Brewers game so we can watch Barry Bonds bat with two outs and no score in the first fucking inning.
(Jesus Christ, I LIKE Barry Bonds and even I hate this shit. Record chases should be fun, but the home run ones always seem to be hollow and joyless. Any home run related record-breaking attempt always brings up the smelly, rotting albatross of steroids, and the most memorable record-breaking seasons seem to happen to guys who are playing on teams that are having lousy years. Mark McGuire hit 70 home runs in 1998 and the Cardinals went 83-79 and finished 19 games out, so who cares?)
BOTTOM OF THE FIRST
Julio Lugo is forced at gunpoint to announce the Red Sox line-up, bringing a dramatic flair that includes referring to himself in the third person in the lead-off spot and, "and the pitcher, Kason Gabbard … pitching." Sox also go down 1-2-3. Barry Bonds is presumably limping around left field back in Milwaukee; Fox does not see fit to provide an update at this time.
TOP OF THE SECOND
Boring announcer who is neither Buck nor McCarver (ah, it's Joe Girardi and Thom Brennaman) drops a bombshell: "Wily Mo is never going to win any Gold Gloves." Seriously, I am going to start trying to arrange a trade for Wily Mo to an AL team that needs a DH myself. At some point, fans are going to have to step in, yes?
Fields hits a line drive to right, and Konerko, who never should have been on second base in the first place, scores easily. Great! Thankfully, Coco "I Will Patrol This Entire Fucking Outfield if I Have to, and Also the Outfield of That Softball Field Across the Street" Crisp makes a nice catch to end the inning.
BOTTOM OF THE SECOND
But, hey! Bases loaded, one out, and I'm thinking, "Great, perfect opportunity to strand the maximum amount of runners by grounding into a double play." But, while making his rounds, Coco apparently located a nice spot in left field to drop down a single, so he does, and two runs score, and it's awesome, but then Wily Mo (apparently not aware that he owes me a run from earlier in the inning) grounds into a double play on the first pitch. At least … he only stranded … two runners?
TOP OF THE THIRD
Tito is forced to endure the dugout interview, looking like he will clearly be battling Julio Lugo to the death for the chance to make the team's next on camera appearance. He mentions that when he saw Papi's slide into second last night, he almost fell off his couch. I feel closer to Tito right now. It's like he knows what it's like for me to watch the game at home every night. Meanwhile, Super Typo settles down for another 1-2-3 inning.
BOTTOM OF THE THIRD
We get one pitch into Julio Lugo's at-bat before being thrown in the trunk and taken back to Milwaukee. NOT ON, FOX, NOT ON. Can't they at least employ picture-in-picture? Barry Bonds hits it back to the pitcher, and when we return back to the game I turned on the television to watch, Lugo is standing on second base. No clue whether he doubled, walked/singled and then stole second or just shouted, "Hey, look over there, it's Barry Bonds!" and trotted over to second when no one was paying attention. Eventually, we get to see a flashback of a nifty double off the wall. I'm still angry. Lugo is eventually stranded at third.
TOP OF THE FOURTH
Another 1-2-3 inning for Super Typo. The White Sox are hacking all over the place, through four innings, he's induced 10 ground outs. We get safely out of the inning without having to go to Wisconsin, but we do have to watch that Dane Cook "there's only one October" commercial, which makes me want to punch someone (hint: Dane Cook) in the face.
BOTTOM OF THE FOURTH
Red Sox also go down 1-2-3. Hey, I meant to say, last week Cspan gave me the best present ever, one of those "I [HEART] HAZEL MAE" t-shirts. I wore it to the game on Monday, and at one point I was on the way back to my seat and a security guard stopped me to say, "Hey, I love Hazel Mae!" and I said, "No, I love Hazel Mae!" and he was like, "No, I love her more!" in a way that I think was meant to imply that I couldn’t touch the Skinemax levels of love he had for Hazel Mae. I thought about trying to correct this assumption, but wisely just went back to my seat. He saw me on my way out and shouted, "I still love her more!"
TOP OF THE FIFTH
A bunch of bad throws get made and two attempts are required to turn the double play properly, but the end result is another 1-2-3 inning for Super Typo.
BOTTOM OF THE FIFTH
Blah blah Coco, Wily Mo and Lugo go down in order blah, watching good young pitching is boring when it's against you blah blah.
TOP OF THE SIXTH
I'm checking Super Typo's pitch count on ESPN.com (very efficient 52 pitches through five innings!) when that stupid "Bonds on Deck" pop-up, uh, pops up, so at least I'm prepared when we get whisked away from the second batter of the inning for Barrywatch. Going into this plate appearance, I think that I'll be irritated if they intentionally walk him and we still have to watch the whole at-bat. At the end of the plate appearance, I'm wishing for an intentional walk, because it would have taken less time than the 10 pitch unintentional walk that actually occurred. By the time we get back to Boston, Kason has apparently gotten the next two batters out. Either that, or they forfeited their at-bats to go watch the Barry Bonds at-bat on TV in the club house, who knows.
BOTTOM OF THE SIXTH
Manny's nickname is "Baby Bull"? They just make this stuff up, right? Right? JD Drew hits a nice line drive double to right, scoring the Baby Bull. Drew appears to be chatting with the ump at second, wonder if he's saying anything along the lines of, "sorry for completely fragging up that totally no-brainer call yesterday, I guess you guys didn't really need to win 12-3." I don't think they were arguing or anything, Drew almost looked amused. You know, if his face was capable of displaying emotion.
Chicago makes a nice force-out play at home, and Joe and Thom spend a THOUSAND YEARS talking about how Fields, the third baseman, played quarterback in college, which I guess would be interesting if he'd thrown the ball home with a spiral motion or something. Mike Lowell gets tagged out at home to end the inning, but the Sox pick up two runs.
TOP OF THE SEVENTH
Mike Lowell, our third baseman, did not to my knowledge play football in college, but he has three kills on the base paths this season, so really, who would you prefer to have on your team? Kason retires two, gives up his first walk of the afternoon but then induces another ground out to end the inning. He's thrown 86 pitches through seven innings, so he should absolutely be out for the eighth.
BOTTOM OF THE SEVENTH
Eric Hinske steals second. So that's … different. My beloved Hazel did a segment with Pedroia on Ultimate Red Sox Show this week and when she asked him which teammate with whom he'd like to get stranded on a desert island, he said Eric Hinske, because he's a "funny guy." This is wonderful information. The Red Sox have one out and a runner in scoring position, so I think you know where Fox sends the game. I do get an answer to my question from the top of the sixth: THEY MAKE US WATCH THE ENTIRE INTENTIONAL WALK. We come back in the middle of an intentional walk to Manny, so I guess Dusty forfeited his at-bat to go watch Barry get intentionally walked on TV.
After intentionally walking Manny and unintentionally walking Youk to load the bases, Joe and Thom muse about whether the White Sox will go get a lefty to face JD, but add, "or, Guillen may leave [Wasserman] in to see what the kid can do." Which I guess is a nice way of saying, "or Ozzie may make a decision that's rooted in the fact that he's completely fucking nuts, we honestly have no idea." So they bring in Logan, the lefty, and he serves up my favorite thing in the whole world: a four-pitch base on balls to walk in a run. And what's better than two walked-in runs? TWO walked-in runs! And you would think that THREE walked-in runs would be two walked-in runs times nirvana, but at this point I'm worried that, with five walks in a row and two pitching changes, Super Typo will have been sitting too long to come back out for the eighth. Coco, sensing my concern but unwilling to concede the inning, quickly hits a base hit up the middle and two more runs score. If things get too much more out of hand, Tito will send Alex Cora out to pitch the eighth. Hinske, apparently also interested to see if Cora could add "relief pitcher" to his "emergency back-up everything" resume, hits a line drive to right and two more runs score. Seven runs have now scored in this half inning, and we're approaching the forty-minute mark. Is Kason even still in the dugout? Lugo, finally, produces a mercy strikeout.
TOP OF THE EIGHTH
As predicted, Kason does not come back out for the eighth. Tito, apparently not ready to release the awesomeness of Alex Cora, relief pitcher, on the world, sends out Lopez. But let's discuss Super Typo for a minute: Going into the Kansas City game, his ERA was 4.83. At the end of this outing, it's sitting at 2.97. If he keeps pitching like this, he can start calling himself Rhomas, Sichael, Tilliam, whatever. Meanwhile, Lopez gives up a couple hits but gets out of the inning.
BOTTOM OF THE EIGHTH
Dusty says, "Maybe Dougie could come out and pitch the ninth!" and starts things off with a base hit. Manny says, "Screw this, I wanna go home and finish reading the Harry Potter book," and grounds out to third base. In the end, the White Sox get out of the inning without any further embarrassment. Probably for the best, I don't want to see Ozzie try to kill someone on national television.
TOP OF THE NINTH
Dougie comes in to catch, but sadly does not pitch to himself. Joe and Thom start reading the production credits with one out in the inning, so things feel pretty tense. A run scores at some point, Joe and Thom talk about nonsense, Pineiro notches a nice called strike to end the game. Ozzie is probably wondering if we could go to Milwaukee or something right now.
posted by always thinking about papelbon @ 7:04 PM
8 Comments:
Ha, I love this. I deeply, deeply do.
I also have to add that Joe Girardi went on a random tangent about how great Tek was which sounded suspiciously similar to the random tangent I go on about how great Tek is when discussing a blowout game.
-Caroline.
yeah, i LOVED the part where he said that clearly the only thing that would stop the red sox from getting to the post season was tek getting hurt. hyperbole much?
Seriously. I mean, I love the Captain as obviously and unconditionally as anyone, but I'm pretty sure he cannot pitch to himself any more than Dougie can. So there's at least five other guys we're gonna need doing business.
What do you think about the Lester callup?
SO MANY FEELINGS:
on the one hand, i don't think that he's done what they wanted him to do, which was to force his way up based on his dominance in triple A.. and i've seen multiple people mention that he may have been pitching below his ability because he was bummed about being in pawtucket instead of with the big club, and i think that's a stretch. kind of a retarded stretch.
so i'm nervous! what i have to imagine they're doing is saying, "okay, when schill comes back, either kason or lester is going to take the fifth spot from tavarez, if we call lester up now, we a) don't have to give two more starts to tavarez and b) we can have them go head to head and figure out which one is more suited." because jon lester has more major league starts under his belt than kason gabbard, i think the sox are obligated to test his ability at a major league level this season before they make a decision about who's going to be their fifth starter. i support that. i just hope that they actually stick with the pitcher who does well in the next few weeks, and they don't send down kason and keep lester if kason keeps pitching as well as he has over his last three starts.
so basically, i'm nervous that they both might do well! we might have too much good starting pitching! our lives are so hard! the reality is that both kason and lester could get lit up in their next starts (and they're playing the indians, so it certainly wouldn't be a surprise) and then the organization would have to be choosing between the least crappy rookie for our fifth starter.
so. i hope he does well. i love that baby-faced crab-in-a-bucket kid. i hope both he and kason pitch no-hitters in cleveland and tito decides they have to have a wizards duel to determine who gets to keep their spot in the rotation. anf if i can't have that problem, i hope that one of them does significantly better than the other, and that the decision re: who to send down is at least obvious.
so ... yeah. i think i'm going to need a roll of antacids with my viewing of tomorrow's game.
Re: Girardi on Tek. I spent that entire diatribe with my fingers in my ears and humming to myself because if he's not talking about it, maybe it won't happen.
Because I don't actually think he's wrong. To whit: 2001, post Nomar and Pedro injuries and then Tek and then BOOM! Wheels come off. Mayhem, death, destruction. Sadness all around.
Or maybe I'm just protective.
Tek is the leader of the team and he will be needed for us to push through the post-season. He is the blood of the team. the pitching and most of all hitting has to be there. Papi & Manny are the keys for the pennant & post season, well in my opinion.
It was great to be back home in Boston last week for vacation. Got to go to the Game Monday for a Sox win! On a side note... went out with some friends after the game and saw nesn reporter, tina cervasio, at Saint. I saw her and some other lady friends and I am pretty sure they were partying with some of the players.
They seemed pretty "Chummy" with the boys, doing shots and the like. Not bashing her but just suprised that she would put herself in that questionable situation. You wonder why people question the female reporters...hmm maybe this is why?
Everyone has a right to decompress but jeez.. I am a fan of hers too. she has done a great job and she has quite a following, players as well I guess :)
Billy
bobby--
i agree that a reporter sleeping with a player is pretty sketchy, however! i doubt it's a trap that only female reporters would fall into, given the opportunity. if there was a pro sport played by female athletes that was covered with the same intensity that any of the major league sports are covered, can't you imagine that male reporters would be trying to hit it with female athletes? think about how often male coaches end up hitting it with their female athletes. ultimately, professional athletes are rich, successful and famous -- people who can get close to them are going to try to sleep with them, and i think that goes for women AND men, eh?
as much as i think joe girardi is kind of a tool, i honestly completely agree with him about tek. we only need to look back to last year to get our answer!
Kelly
I agree with you 100% about it going both ways. A male reporter should be aware of the same situations. I am not saying there was anything going on, just surprised that she would be out with players, and I am pretty sure she is married. In any event, it was just one of those quasi celebrity moments...
About Tek.. He is a question mark with the age and catching all these years. If he is hurt then it will affect the team. Also we have to look at the pitchers. Age will work both ways for the post season. need the older guys to stay healthy and the young guys not to get freaked out about the playoffs. even keeled (sp?) should be the phrase.
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