The Odd Blog Week In Review
I’m back from my family reunion and ready to take on more of the oddities of baseball. First of all, I had a great time with all the people I don’t know, and I learned a few things: Royals fans are better than Tigers fans at “Quiddler”, but just barely, and that you should never play “Trivial Pursuit” against someone who’s memorized the entire game. If you get forced to, you should resort to pronouncing everything wrong (Germany = grr-mane-ee) etc.
Now to baseball, where the Royals beat the Red Sox last night! (Yeah, you knew I’d have to write about this). This is the first time since Game 7 of the Stanley Cup that I’ve really gotten “into” a sporting event. I was listening to the broadcast on the radio and when David DeJesus hit the two run homer to take the lead, I was practically shouting down the stairs that we got a homer to the rest of the family, which I don’t think really cared. This may seem like weird activity to you- but I am a Royals fan who writes a blog entitled The Odd Blog. Another thing: people were commenting on articles about the Royals about how people in Boston were already getting their brooms out, how we were a pushover and that they were already looking ahead to the next series. Not anymore! I’m feeling like those brooms are going to turn on the BoSox! Yes, it will be a four-game sweep for the Royals! I can just feel it!
Anyway, other stuff happened while I was away.
Banny Ramirez came back from his suspension… … … but I don’t really care.
Joel Hanrahan got a win for the Nats… without even being at the stadium. That was odd, so I have to write something about it. If you want to read the whole story, it’s right… here. The irony is that the guy who scored the winning run wasn’t on the Nationals when the game started. He was in Pittsburgh, but got traded for Hanrahan. It was also the first time since 1975 that a team got a walk-off in an opposing stadium.
And finally… Joe Sakic retired. He was a 17-time captain for the Colorado Avalanche and was 8th all time in scoring. He was also a 12-time all star. Joe Sakic, you will be missed!
You Too Can Vote 25 Times For The Royals!
I did my duty this morning, voting 25 times for the Royals. I don’t think it helped, as there are probably no Royals in the top…. anything in their respective positions. So now you can feel secure in knowing your favorite players are doing o.k. in the polls, and the Royals need your help! So vote the 24 times you have left for the Royals, because I’ve done my part.
Now to baseball that counts, because home-field advantage in the World Series doesn’t really matter to a fourth place team.
The Royals play the White Sox this weekend, a four game series. You all know that I hate four game series, but I won’t be doing too much about it because I’ve got company coming tomorrow (thanks to all of you- one of you- that gave me advice). After that, I get to go to a family reunion which will have even more under-10 year olds. But it will be lots of fun, even though I’ll be away from the blog for about a week.
After that detour, I will now review the last few Royals games:
In our last outing, pitching was great, but… everything else was a vacuum, if you know what I mean. Thus, we lost. Again. We’ve been doing a lot of that lately, but being a Royals fan, you get used to it. *sigh.* The lone bright spots this past week has been Billy Butler, who is doing great at the plate (4-for-4 yesterday in the losing effort) and Zack Greinke, who is… back to normal. Of course, on this team, “normal” is “excellent.” Butler and Greinke are the full, five course Thanksgiving dinner, and the rest of the Royals are the lime jello salad. Not that there’s anything wrong with jello salad, but I’m hungry right now, so I decided to slip that analogy in there.
I sense a dinner bell coming up, so that’s all for now. More to come next week!
The Odd Blog Week In Review (Week ?)
I don’t know what week it is. It’s summer, why should I be keeping track of dates? There is one date that I’m counting to, next Friday my second cousins visit, with five kids aged 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9. Suggestions, please!?
Now to baseball, where the Royals are playing the Pirates, and I am ashamed to say that we have a worse record than Pittsburgh. Yipe! That means, with respect to the Pirates, that the Royals are worse than I thought they were. Let’s see how we do in this series.
There is one Royal who is doing good as of recently, and that’s Luke Hochevar. According to MLB.com’s player search, there are four of him (seriously, try it!) and as long as the one that has shown up in the last few starts keeps the other three away, I’m fine with that. Imagine all four showing up to start a game or something. That would be odd. Anyway… he’s had some great starts recently, pitching an 80 pitch complete game against the Reds last week and getting a pretty good start in this week against Houston, despite having a no-decision thanks to our imploding bullpen. So, the start in the series finale against Pittsburgh, assuming I have the schedule right, is the one where he can either prove himself ready for the majors and possibly be a Zack Greinke in the future, or falls down like he did early in the season and have to be sent to the minors… again.
Next, (M/B)anny Ramirez. What was he doing playing minor-league ball? You would think that they wouldn’t allow to play any baseball, but apparently there’s a loophole or something. So I’m offering (of course) my take on what the rules should be:
“When a player is suspended for any amount of time by the league, that player will not be allowed to play baseball with the MLB or any of its affiliates, but should be allowed to participate in practices with the team, so long as he is not in the dugout, clubhouse etc. during a game. They will not be allowed on road trips, unless they are suspended for more than 15 games and will be reinstated during a said road trip, etc. etc. etc.”
I had more, but I have a feeling that was getting a little boring.
Finally, a topic that, as a Buffalo Sabres fan, I unfortunately know way too much about. Injuries! Coco Crisp is gone for the season after getting shoulder surgery, and that is a big blow to our chances. Coupled with other injuries that have plagued our team, including those to Alex Gordon at the beginning of the season and Kyle Farnsworth now, that’s not good. AND… breaking news from three hours ago (that’s what they call late-breaking) Sidney Ponson tests positive!?! Yipe! But what for? Read the article, but apparently it’s for a banned stimulant. He’s banned from international play for two years, but of course the WBC and the Olympics (which no longer have baseball) aren’t for three years. Nice going, IBAF.
Deja Vu, Part 2!
The title even rhymes! Happy Father’s Day, first of all, to any fathers reading this.
You all know (or may not know) that my last post covered the fact that we lost 12-5 twice in a row. That hurts. Well, it happened again. We lost today by a score of, yes, 12-5. There were no errors; that was a bit of a shock, but I still feel like punching my computer. Even more annoying is that our number one pitcher, not Zack Greinke, but Gil Meche, lasted 3 and 1/3 innings and gave up 9 runs on 9 hits (remember, no errors, and he only gave up two walks). Even more frustrating is the fact that Albert Pujols knocked in half of the Cardinals’ runs. Yes, I know he’s arguably the best player in the game, I still hate it when somebody knocks in 6 runs and gets his team their second grand slam of the series. When will it end? The lone light at the end of the tunnel is that we aren’t the Washington Nationals, who just recently won their 20th game. We’re only 8 1/2 back! We aren’t 16 games back like the Nats! Oh, wait, what’s that? The Diamondbacks are 16 back, too? That’s irritating because they managed to knock in 24 runs to our ten in their last two games of the series.
The loss today brings our run total in the last five games to:
Them: 53
Us: 21
Now, scoring 21 runs isn’t bad, but giving up 53 is. Our average runs per game is 4.2, which is very respectable. Our average runs given up per game is… let’s just say much less respectable (10.6).
I’m too aggravated to go on, let me just say congratulations to Tony La Russa for his 2500th win, even if it did come against… *cough* the Royals.
Deja Vu
Imagine that title with all the little markings that are supposed to be there, and that’s the real title.
The Royals once again lost to the Diamondbacks, but it’s not us losing that’s odd. That’s normal. What’s weird about this is that we lost by the exact same score, 12-5. Now I can see a team losing 1-0 twice in a row or something like that, but 12-5 is such an unusual score that you hardly see it once or twice a month. Giving up 24 runs in two games, that’s just… pathetic. Not only that, we made three errors in each game. Three errors might not be that much for a little league team, especially one of the ones I was on, but for the majors it’s obviously a lot. We haven’t had back-to-back three error games since 2002.
Right when I thought we were turning a corner, apparently we forgot to turn on our blinker and another car with a license plate “D-Backs” plowed into us. Argh.
The good news is that we have the I-70 series coming up. We’re going to play St. Louis next so that’s not exactly good news, but it’s always fun when we play each other. Our football teams battle for the “Governor’s Cup” or something like that every year. I’m not sure about baseball, but we’ve lost two out of three against the Cardinals so far. The last time we met, there was another instance of Deja Vu, we lost 5-0 twice. It’s going to be entertaining. I was just watching some feature on the Today show about travel toys. I wonder how many MLB players bring magnetic pirate sudoku… or maybe that would be magnetic performance-enhancing drug sudoku. Sorry, I couldn’t resist that.
Re-turning The Corner (This Time, Backwards!)
Well, so much for turning the corner. We did terrible last night against the D-Backs, even with Greinke on the mound. Right now, I’m just really annoyed. I thought we were going to do so much better after getting out of this slump. It’s like Indian Summer, that warm spell after the first frost of the year, I think. Having a dad (Happy Father’s Day) who’s a meteorologist, he could probably explain it better. I just forgot why this even connects to baseball. Moving on…
Sammy Sosa using PEDs? Why didn’t they tell us this earlier? I’ve said this before, and I’ll probably say this again: Why now? He tested positive in 2003. They should probably tell us in 2003, then. I don’t think it took six years to get the results. It seems that someone high up in the majors wants to keep baseball in the news or something. Did they not realize that the only sports going on right now are baseball, the college world series, and soccer. The CWS is going to be over soon, and soccer isn’t exactly America’s pastime, though I enjoy a match now and then. I’m just getting really annoyed with all of these record holders testing positive for banned substances. Should we automatically suspect that somebody who breaks a record in this league used steroids? Let’s say Zack Greinke broke that scoreless inning record earlier this season. “Oh, wait, he probably used steroids!” (But more accurately, “Oh, wait, how can somebody on the Royals break a record without cheating?). If I hear any more of this, I’m going to crawl under a rock and not come out until October, unless the Royals start doing better.
Finally, last Saturday while I was Chocolatetown on vacation (Hershey) I walked by Hersheypark, the theme park there. What song was playing? Yes, Saturday In The Park by Chicago. Coincidence?
Turning The Corner
I never got that phrase. What corner? Who’s to say it doesn’t lead to even worse circumstances? But I’m still going to use it. The Royals are 6-3 in the last 9 games after going 5-20 in the last 25, so it seems that they are turning a corner and headed in the right direction. However, the Royals have been a bit streaky, so if we start to lose games, we’ll probably head back down to the basement.
One thing that hasn’t been bad this year is the triples. When you think of teams that can hit a lot of triples, the Royals probably don’t come to mind, considering that they don’t really hit at all. But the Royals are on top of the league right now in triples, with 23, 7 more than the Houston Astros. This is equal to the amount of triples hit by the Dodgers and Tigers combined, two teams which are both in first place. It is also equal to the combined number of home runs hit so far this season by David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez, Alex Rodriguez, and Bobby Abreu, but I doubt that that arguement will fool anyone. Coco Crisp and David DeJesus lead the league in triples, with 5 each. The Oakland A’s have hit 5 as a team. And then there’s this game where John Buck, our catcher, legged out two triples against the then-first place Toronto Blue Jays. He has three on the year. So we’re really good at hitting triples, just not at bringing them in. I’m not even going to tell you where the Royals are in RBIs.
Finally, Zack Greinke is pitching tonight. He’s done terrible by his standards his last few outings, but he still leads the league in ERA with a .172, is fourth in strikeouts, and with a win will get up to second in wins. He’s still good enough to strike fear into the hearts of opposing hitters. Or at least get them out.
Something in Review…?
Yes, it’s something. I’m back from vacation and ready to tackle all the (un)pressing issues of baseball. Let’s start off with the end, even if the beginning is a very good place to start. Yesterday was an off day, but I was unpacking yesterday and the lightning bombarding the area seemed more like a supernova, so for once I didn’t care that there were only two games on.
Now we go back to the beginning. I went up to Buffalo last week and caught a Bisons’ game (that’s the minors, incidentally) and started my ballhawking career as I dove hilariously heroically over the rest of the row and snagged a foul ball in the eighth. The Bisons got shutout, but I’m used to my teams getting shutout.
After going to Buffalo, we went down to Hershey, PA. (Yes, it’s that Hershey) and had one of the best days of television watching I’ve ever had. Last Friday I was flipping between the Stanley Cup, Baseball Tonight, and the Calder Cup. The Calder Cup is minor league hockey, and the Hershey Bears won their 10th championship. The city went crazy.
And then on the return trip the Royals finally won a series… and it was a sweep! It pulled us out of last place!
Rewind a few days and you find a bird losing the game for the Royals. You all have heard about this I’m sure, but for Royals fans this hurts pretty bad. If the hitters are doing okay and the imploding bullpen isn’t imploding, we still have to find a way to lose. So… we decide to have the other team hit the ball at a bird. I’m not blaming the bird, it’s not his fault, and I’m not blaming Shin-Soo Choo or whoever it was. I’m blaming the Indians’ ground crew. It’s surprising this hasn’t happened as much as it should have. There were a lot of seagulls coming off the lake at the Bisons’ game, but the only time they got in the way was when they found some food four rows in front of me. I think this game should be replayed starting in the 10th somewhere where there are NO seagulls. Like here in KC, where there isn’t an lake for miles around. That’s all for now, but there will be more rants to come.
Off Days can be Hazardous to Your Health
A new study reports that not watching any baseball because your team has an off day can be hazardous to your health. At least I noticed that I was getting pretty bored last Thursday, when we had an off day. Is being bored a health condition? It should be. Meanwhile, the Royals have another off day today before taking on the Rays. The Rays used to be one of my favorite teams. Then they started getting good. As I may have said before, I’m the opposite of a fair weather fan. (Would that be a stormy-weather fan? The mysteries of life!) I root for the underdog without even really knowing. While on occasion this could help me win big in Vegas, I normally just get the heartbreak of coming in last place in a division, which is basically all I’ve ever known in this great game of baseball.
Now to hockey. I noticed a few things in Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Finals. First of all, there was a fight with 18 seconds left to go. At this point, you shouldn’t be fighting. You may be frustrated, but you shouldn’t risk getting a suspension for the next game of the series, especially if you are Evgeni Malkin, and your team desperately needs you. Also, apparently Detroit fans really like sing-alongs. There must have been at least 5 in the final two minutes. The one that annoyed me the most was “Don’t Stop Believing” by Journey. First of all, you just won the Stanley Cup last year! Second, everybody yelled SOUTH DETROIT when those lyrics came up in the song. I may be wrong for all I know but I may be right when I say that the song isn’t about Detroit. But if they want one that is, try this: Just a big car plant… and it’s going faaaast. (That’s supposed to be to the same tune, BTW)
Finally, this week I’m going to see my cousin, who is a big Red Sox fan and who got me started on baseball a few years ago. We always have a big rivalries when the Sox play the Royals and when I get there… the Royals will be sweeping the Red Sox. It’s going to be a lot of fun.
That should be about it for today. Bonus points if you can find the hidden lyrics in this post.
The Odd Blog Week In Review (Week 8)
Is it really week 8 already? I lost track with that quarter in review. Anyway, this week has been like a remote with one button: eject, eject, eject, eject, eject…
Let’s break it down:
Memorial Day
The first ejection of the week occured Monday when our manager, Mr. Trey Hillman, got his first ejection of the year. Other than that, there were more fireworks than there should have been on Memorial Day: The Yankees, Dodgers, Tigers, Rays, Indians, White Sox, and Pirates all knocked in at least 10 runs, and the Astros, Reds, Red Sox, Padres, Giants, Marlins, and Cubs, along with the seven teams mentioned earlier, all got 10 hits. Except for the Cardinals and Brewers (1-0) , there were fireworks all around.
Other ejections today included: Cubs pitcher Ted Lily, Padres manager Bud Black, and Padres catcher Nick Hundley.
May 27
Today featured even more ejections, notably Carlos Zambrano, who then threw the ball into the outfield, and took a few swings at a Gatorade machine. Wait, what is a Gatorade machine doing in a dugout? What happened to the jugs that they used to use? That’s very unsportsmanlike, the machine and Zambrano.
May 28
There were ejections galore in the Twins/Red Sox game tonight. In the seventh inning, the Twins’ catcher and manager were both ejected for arguing a play at the plate, and in the bottom of the seventh, the Red Sox’s catcher and manager were ejected for arguing balls and strikes. Interesting.
That’s all for today. There will be one more post, and on Thursday I’m leaving to go on vacation. So no posts for a while starting Thursday. I will not exist on the Internet, apparently.
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