ICE YAY.

Played eight ends last night, as a sort of ongoing demo while the open house was in progress. I can feel it in my hips and my shoulders today. It's wonderful. :-)

What's not wonderful is my sense of weight. I'm not really a weight-throwing expert anyway, plus it's the beginning of the season (plus the ice is brand-new and awfully frosty) -- plus, I feel compelled to point out, I've lost close to 45 pounds, so whatever I knew last spring I'd have to tweak anyway. (flt, from the house: "How's your weight?" me, from the hack: "How the hell should I know?") My "bumper weight" hits last night were hack weight, with decent sweeping. I've never thrown big weight, but this was just silly. I said to flt at one point, what I should do? is strap a rock to my ass, and then I'll be back to where I was before and everything will be fine, right? Heh. Right.

ALCS game 1 (liveblogging, innings 1-3)

I'm not allowed to talk to my baseball buddy tangleofthorns pretty much until this series is over, so you all get to listen to me instead.

Memo to the sports guy on the radio:  don't tell me the game starts at 7:30 when it starts at 7:00, asshold.  I missed the top of the first, thanks very much, and my boys are the visiting team.

I don't have a lot to say about the bottom of the first.  Feh.

Or the top of the second, for different reasons.

Bottom of the second:  You know, I'm speaking as an Indians fan, now.  But I'm not sure I agree that these have all been strikes.  Kielty and Varitek went down in three pitches each, and the first two to Crisp were called strikes as well, and I want Sabathia to strike these guys out, and ... I'm a little skeptical.  (At least Varitek swung at the second pitch, so it may or may not actually have been a strike.  And Crisp looked at a couple of balls before he struck out swinging.)

Top of the third:  See, and I think there are some pitches here that I would call strikes that the umpire isn't.  But I'm not the expert, am I.  This baseball umpire couldn't tell you if a guy was corner-sweeping (which, incidentally, is no longer illegal).  (Lowell makes a nice catch.  They really should keep him.)  Grady Sizemore.  Could he be any cuter?  Even if he does - which I wish the team would stop doing - SWING AT BAD PITCHES.

commercial.

ALCS game 1 (liveblogging 2, 3rd inning)

Bottom 3rd:  ground-rule double followed by sac bunt.  Feh.  But it's fun to say "Youkilis."  And when did these guys all start wearing beards?  (Listen, I don't know if that ball actually hit Papi.  It hit his shirt, for sure.  And with all the respect in the world, a smaller dude, it wouldn't have hit at all.)  Okay - Manny, I love you, man, but how many practice swings does one guy need?  ... You know, I'd almost rather CC walk in a run than give up a home run?  But of course I'd rather he THROW STRIKES and get guys out.  Some of those would have been strikes in the last inning (okay, not the ones in the dirt, probably) - what, is the umpire messing with us?  And Gutierrez!  Last week he was so much better than this!  (The bottom of the third is going on FOREVER.)  FOR GOD'S SAKE do not drop the ball at third base thank you.

So Boston bats around and scores 4.  As an Aaron Sorkin character would say:  let's not do that a lot.

ALCS game 1 (liveblogging 3, 4th inning)

Top 4th:  God DAMN it, Pronk.

Who remembers playing softball in high school?  I haven't played since then, not on a league or anything, but I seem to remember that in softball we had four outfielders.  Did all ten players bat?  Must have, right, because there's no such thing as a Designated Non-Hitter, is there?  I mean, not on purpose.

Bottom 4th:  Dear Casey Blake - thank you for not bobbling the ball.  Please don't take time to admire it in your glove.  Just throw it, okay?  Thanks.  And thank you, Gutierrez, for being in place to catch that one this time.

ALCS game 1 (liveblogging 4, 5th inning)

Top 5th:  See, and Garko really was hit by that pitch, and then what happens?  GIDP.  You know, you don't have to swing at ALL the good pitches, if you've got some strikes to spare (which you will if you don't swing at the bad ones).  BUT YOU SHOULD SWING AT THE GOOD PITCHES WHEN THE COUNT IS 3-2.

Bottom 5th:  Okay, I'm done with this guy.  Can we get a Rafi in here?  See, but in the second inning, he was calling these strikes!  God.  Bases loaded, nobody out?  I would like you to throw nine strikes now, please.  ... Or you could give up a 2RBI double because Gutierrez still can't find the right place to stand.  GET ME A RAFI.  I'm not kidding.  Or a Jensen.  But JESUS, Gutierrez!  Right field is big, but it's not THAT big.  Can't Grady help him out at all?  See, Grady can CATCH A BALL.  Okay.  Good boy, Franklin, and good boy, Grady, for getting there in case FG was going to be out there ... making snow angels, or whatever you do in right field when you're not catching fly balls.


I don't know why I watch this stuff.  It just makes me annoyed.

ALCS game 1 (liveblogging 5, 6th inning)

Top 6th:  Hey, a double, so the next guy can't GIDP.  Well done not swinging at that high outside crap, Grady.  See, and that inside pitch would have smacked him if he'd been the size of Big Papi.  He can ground into a plain out, though.  And Cabrera - what can I say?  I like feisty little shortstops who wear #13.  (I know he's playing second base.  He did some shortstop work against the Yankees, though, and my boy Omar Vizquel wore #13 at shortstop when he was here.  ... And by "here" I mean Cleveland.)

Bottom 6th:  CAN WE PUT SOMEONE ELSE IN GODDAMN RIGHT FIELD PLEASE?!!?  (But not Trotter Nixon; he is, as we've seen, dead to me.)  And we've got another pitcher, as well.  Because fucking FUCK.  Okay.  But.  As they said during the Indians' 12-3 win over the Yankees, you get as many runs as you want -- it's still only one win.  You see?  GRADY SIZEMORE.  Thank you.  Gutierrez would have dropped that ball, or not got to it in the first place.  GRADY.  GRADY.  GRADY.  So glad they're hitting them to center field now instead of right.  Or that Grady is deciding center field is bigger than it has been all night.  That's fine too.  Hustle, Grady!  Aaand Varitek swings at a bad pitch.  Nice to see it's not just the Indians doing it.

ALCS game 1 (liveblogging 6, 7th inning)

See, what I said to tangleofthorns and my teammate K and anybody else who asked, really, is that this series was almost win-win for me, and what I really wanted was to see some good baseball.  And I mostly haven't seen that tonight, is all I'm saying.  (Also, why is "Favre" pronounced "farv" and not "fav-ruh"?)

Top 7th:  Hey, look, there was a ball hit to the outfield that nobody caught, and it was a Cleveland Indian who hit it.  Dude!

But that was all the love we were going to get in the 7th inning.  Time for the stretch.  I will go get a pretzel.

ALCS game 1 (liveblogging 7, 7th inning)

Well, at least the 7th inning stretch at Fenway doesn't involve a bad singer singing "God Bless America" in a bad key.

Bottom 7th:  Casey Blake, you are on notice.  You too, Mastny pitcher-person.  Who got you out of that potential fix?  That's right:  GRADY.

ALCS game 1 (liveblogging 8, 8th inning)

Top 8th:  Almost to the green monster!  But not quite and also foul.  Is it just me, or does Manny Ramirez look like he's not in much of a hurry ever once the ball hits the ground?  I mean, maybe he's not, ground-rule and all.  Also, who is it that Grady Sizemore reminds me of?  Besides himself, I mean.  I feel like he looks like someone.  You SEE, Gutierrez, did you see JD Drew make that catch?  THAT IS HOW YOU CATCH A BALL IN RIGHT FIELD.  Nice catch, JD.  LEARN, PLEASE, FRANKLIN.  I like the name "Asdrubal".  I don't think I'd use it, despite the fact that I'll need an A, but it's a good name.  And Manny has made a nice diving rolling catch as well.  You see, I'm absolutely gracious when good baseball is being played.  And the commentators are dithering about whether there was glove between the ball and the ground - but this is why there is no instant replay, which is exactly right.  I don't want the game stopped while the umpires look at tape.

Bottom 8th:  Why can they do nothing but walk Ramirez?  Nice play at first, though.  Yay for pitchers covering the base.  And FINALLY Gutierrez gets his glove on something.

ALCS game 1 (liveblogging 9, 9th inning)

Top 9th:  You've got to feel dumb when you put in a pinch-hitter and he strikes out.  Oooh, and I loves me some Kenny Lofton.  That was a base hit, and my man took a double.  Welcome home, Kenny.  :-)  Way to hustle even when (let's be honest) there's not really much point.  And now they walk the bases loaded.  Didn't anybody ever teach the Red Sox that it's not nice to play with your food?  (Wow, the people of Boston hate this pitcher, y'all.)  (Until he throws three strikes in a row.)


Um, color commentators, two things:  first, how was the 3-4 combination of Ortiz and Ramirez "lethal" this evening - they didn't do a damn thing.  Ortiz hit some stuff, but Manny, he walked.  Are they lethal walkers?  And second, Manny Ramirez is not the DH.  That guy with his shirt untucked is Ortiz.  Come on, you're professionals.  :-P



Some time in the late 80's, after Field of Dreams had come out -- have I talked about this here in the past couple of weeks? -- there was an editorial cartoon in the Plain Dealer that showed a man standing on the pitcher's mound in the old Municipal Stadium in Cleveland, looking up to see where the voice was coming from that was whispering to him, "PLANT CORN HERE."

I would love, LOVE, a copy of that cartoon.  The Indians are not sucking out loud these days way they were then, of course, when in Muny Stadium, with a capacity of something like 80K, the record low attendance was just over one thousand.  But all the same, while Red Sox Nation were accustomed during the long years of their unhappiness to their boys almost getting there and then not quite managing to close the deal, in Cleveland we are accustomed to thinking of ourselves as always, always, always the underdog.  The movie Major League was not quite a documentary, but it couldn't have been made about any other team.  I mean, look at the ALDS -- the Indians had the best record in baseball^[1], and the Yankees were the wild card, and if the Yankees weren't favored to win that thing, it's news to me.  The TV commentators were calling it an upset when the Indians won it in four games.  I believe there is a general sense that the modern Cleveland Indians should be able to defeat teams that are really no good, like -- well, like Baltimore and Cincinnati and anyone from Florida, for a start -- but against teams that can really play, they've got their work cut out for them.

So in this ALCS, it's not that we don't think the Indians can win.  It's that we have nothing like any confidence that they will.  All of which is to say I think I am a great deal less disappointed in the loss of game 1 than any Red Sox fan would have been if the Indians had won it.  It will be a couple of generations of non-shitty baseball, I think, before the people of Cleveland get used to thinking of our baseball team as much other than nine guys knocking a ball around in what should have been a cornfield.


[1] Oh, the footnote. Yeah - so the Indians and the Red Sox had the same win-loss record, and the Red Sox beat the Indians head-to-head, so I'm not sure how the Indians count as having the best record, but that's what the commentators said. (I'm aware that they had the best record in the American League outside of the East and that's why they got the Yankees in the first round - that's not what I'm talking about.) Of course, commentators have been idiotic and wrong before; if it turns out they were mistaken, please read above "the Indians were tied for the best record in baseball". Thank you.