Baseball is America's pastime, but had our forefathers enjoyed the modern conveniences of clocks, ball pumps, or haste, this pastime may well have been basketball or football. Instead, they had wood, leather, and a rudderless disposition. Baseball is Boring is a series of live blogs for folks who need irony and self-awareness to get through a game.
Those poor Detroit Tigers. Look, things are bad enough when people are predicting your going to go 162-0 in a season, and you end up finishing in last place behind the Kansas City Royals. Let's face it, the Tigers have been counting down the days until the season's end for a few months now. That was supposed to be yesterday, but just when they thought they were out, MLB goes and pulls them back in again.
Today they take on the Chicago White Sox in a makeup game that will prove to be a pretty important game in the scheme of things. With a win today, the Tigers will pull into a fourth place tie with the Kansas City Royals in the AL Central. If they lose, they are the sole proprietors of last place.
An entire season comes down to one game in Chicago on a rainy afternoon, and it's all after the jump.
Baseball is America's pastime, but had our forefathers enjoyed the modern conveniences of clocks, ball pumps, or haste, this pastime may well have been basketball or football. Instead, they had wood, leather, and a rudderless disposition. Baseball is Boring is a series of live blogs for folks who need irony and self-awareness to get through a game.
Check out Jonathan Papelbon up there. What are screams but angry yawns?
When first instituted a decade ago, interleague baseball was fun. Before 1997, the only regular-season interleague baseball existed as fan fiction in my Trapper Keeper, and usually involved Bo Jackson catching a line drive from Barry Larkin and running up a wall to high-five the black guy from DC Talk. But today, the interleague thrill is gone. Proponents of the rule argue that they allow fans to see teams and players they otherwise wouldn't at the ballpark, but I don't live in a baseball city, and those people can go fly a kite.
Baseball is America's pastime, but had our forefathers enjoyed the modern conveniences of clocks, ball pumps, or haste, this pastime may well have been basketball or football. Instead, they had wood, leather, and a rudderless disposition. Baseball is Boring is a series of live blogs for folks who need irony and self-awareness to get through a game.
While the annual meetings of the White Sox and Cubs has lost some of its original luster in my eyes over the years, this year's battle between the teams is a bit more exciting. After all, it's not very often that both teams are in first place in their divisions when they face off. In fact, it's so rare that it's never happened before this afternoon.
Unfortunately, all this series seems to do is seperate fans of both sides even further than usual. While the divide is always there, for 50 weeks of the year it's a rather congenial divide. The two sets of fans don't much like the other's team, but at least they can get along with each other most of the time.
Then the week of the series comes and with it comes the hate. All of a sudden friends you haven't spoken to in months are sending you text messages saying "We're gonna kick your ass this weekend!" All of a sudden you find yourself taking some kind of cruel enjoyment out of seeing Carlos Zambrano have to leave a game early and have to undergo an MRI on his shoulder.
It's horrible the way that Sox fans and Cubs fans treat each other during these times, and I hope you join me for the next three hours while I try to do everything in my power to make it worse.
Baseball is America's pastime, but had our forefathers enjoyed the modern conveniences of clocks, ball pumps, or haste, this pastime may well have been basketball or football. Instead, they had wood, leather, and a rudderless disposition. Baseball is Boring is a series of live blogs for folks who need irony and self-awareness to get through a game.
My girlfriend and I go to a lot of games in Cleveland, and for a change we decided to check out one of the Minor League teams. She took a look at the schedule and laughed at the team names. I told her that a weird-funny team name (Everett AquaSox) isn't as bad as a team name that used to make sense but doesn't now because the team moved. Like the Utah Jazz. "Where did the Jazz play before Utah?" "Uh, New Orleans? Where else would they have named a team 'The Jazz'?"
Kids, if the Rockies ever move ANYWHERE other than Colorado, be prepared to have this conversation. It just won't work anywhere else. They can't be the San Antonio Rockies. They can't be the Orlando Rockies. They can't be the Mexico City Rockies.
Although I guess the Indians could move anywhere they want, because there were pretty much Indians everywhere.
Baseball is America's pastime, but had our forefathers enjoyed the modern conveniences of clocks, ball pumps, or haste, this pastime may well have been basketball or football. Instead, they had wood, leather, and a rudderless disposition. Baseball is Boring is a series of live blogs for folks who need irony and self-awareness to get through a game.
Today the Chicago Cubs, fresh off the incapacitation of Alfonso Soriano (baseball's answer to Willis Reed), place their hopes in their ace, Carlos Zambrano (baseball's answer to Willis Reed). Zambrano is a man who can yell and chew gum at the same time, and I doubt he'll let the loss of Soriano distract him from posting a solid outing.
The Braves respond by trotting out northpaw Tim Hudson (baseball's answer to Willis Reed), the closest resemblance of a sure thing that Atlanta's rotation can presently muster. With any luck, we may even see day-to-day legend Chipper Jones (baseball's answer to Willis Reed) make a plate appearance.
Braves-Cubs, from the friendly confines of Willis Reed, after the jump.
Baseball is America's pastime, but had our forefathers enjoyed the modern conveniences of clocks, ball pumps, or haste, this pastime may well have been basketball or football. Instead, they had wood, leather, and a rudderless disposition. Baseball is Boring is a series of live blogs for folks who need irony and self-awareness to get through a game.
The NL East is quickly becoming one of the more interesting divisions in baseball as of late. Of course last year went to the NL West, which as everyone knows quickly disbanded when the state of California detached from the contiguous United States and recessed into the Pacific. To this day the grease lingers atop its surface.
The Braves and Marlins are tied in the win column coming into today, with the Marlins holding onto a game lead in standings. The Phillies (35-25) are 2.5 games ahead, although they have to face the mighty Volquez of the Reds, who's an even trade for Josh Hamilton only a pitcher and not on crack.
Baseball is America's pastime, but had our forefathers enjoyed the modern conveniences of clocks, ball pumps, or haste, this pastime may well have been basketball or football. Instead, they had wood, leather, and a rudderless disposition. Baseball is Boring is a series of live blogs for folks who need irony and self-awareness to get through a game.
From the Wikipedia article for "beard" - "A beard is the hair that grows on a human's chin, cheeks, neck, and the area above the upper lip (the opposite is a clean-shaven face). Typically, only post-pubescent males are able to grow beards. When differentiating between upper and lower facial hair, a beard specifically refers to the facial hair on the lower part of a man's chin."
The question here is, "how much lower part of a man's chin can one man have?" Peralta might as well cut his chest hair into a straight line and pretend it's his jawline. Sorry Jhonny, I want to look like Brad Pitt as much as the next guy, but when your head is shaped like a ripe melon a thin line of scruff isn't going to differentiate your neck fat from your head fat.
Baseball is America's pastime, but had our forefathers enjoyed the modern conveniences of clocks, ball pumps, or haste, this pastime may well have been basketball or football. Instead, they had wood, leather, and a rudderless disposition. Baseball is Boring is a series of live blogs for folks who need irony and self-awareness to get through a game.
Look deep into Edwin Jackson's eyes. Deeper. Stare into his soul. Can you see it? Do you see the pain in Edwin's life? No matter how hard Edwin tries to maintain his calm demeanor and Fonzie-esque cool, his eyes cannot hide the pain of the man they belong to.
Tonight Edwin will come face to face with the painful memories of his past, as he and his Tampa Bay Rays teammates take on the Chicago White Sox in the first of a four-game series. Though, just mentioning the words "white" and "sox" together in a sentence is enough to send little Edwin recoiling in terror. You see, as a boy Edwin was returning home one night from doing homework at a friends house, and was startled to find his home was empty. He called out for his mother, but he got no response, for she was not there.
Then Edwin heard a noise from his bedroom upstairs, and ran up to investigate. What he encountered once he got there has never left him to this day. He found a man, naked, in his room holding a knife to his teddy bear's, Huggsy McSqueezealot, throat. The naked man told Edwin that one more move, and "I'll cut this bear's head right off!!" Edwin pleaded with the man to let Huggsy go, and leapt towards him, only to be thrown back with a mighty stiff arm from the naked man.
"I warned you not to move." he said, just before cutting Huggsy's throat. The naked man then dropped the bear to the ground to drown in his own stuffing before leaping out the window to safety, and it was only then that Edwin noticed that the naked man had not been completely naked at all. For you see, the man had been wearing something the entire time. One pair of white socks.
Baseball is America's pastime, but had our forefathers enjoyed the modern conveniences of clocks, ball pumps, or haste, this pastime may well have been basketball or football. Instead, they had wood, leather, and a rudderless disposition. Baseball is Boring is a series of live blogs for folks who need irony and self-awareness to get through a game.
Of all our culture's shopworn clichés, my least favorite might be the "Pay your respects to Martin Luther King/Presidents/veterans/war dead by barbecuing/buying things!" number. The intended aim is to sneer at our disingenuous celebration of these holidays, but this sentiment is so well-worn that those who contribute it are, in fact, the same people about whom they are sneering. It's an impressive feat of self-effacement and intentional irony for an entire populace to pull off, but I'm still sick and tired of it, and I, for one, refuse to indulge you.
Oh, screw it. What Better Way To Honor Our Fallen Heroes Than To Read A Live Blog Of A Baseball Game? Cubs and Dodgers, at Wrigley, after the jump.
Baseball is America's pastime, but had our forefathers enjoyed the modern conveniences of clocks, ball pumps, or haste, this pastime may well have been basketball or football. Instead, they had wood, leather, and a rudderless disposition. Baseball is Boring is a series of live blogs for folks who need irony and self-awareness to get through a game.
Today we have another mystery player, seen here in a Yankees cap. A small clue would be that he's my all-time favorite Yankees player. I'll drop more clues later if it's not immediately apparent.
Today we have the FIRST PLACE Rays hosting the SECOND TO LAST PLACE Yankees. I assure you my psilocybin habit has been thoroughly kicked, and that is indeed the case. A huge favorite to be the breakout team in the American League this season they've been exactly that, through strong pitching and timely hitting. Granted, I believe they'll fall back to earth in the months to come, it's still rather exciting to see action springing from the former cellar dwellers of the east.
