Blue Jays 7, Pirates 2: A BASEBALL GAME

Yusssssssssss

I had known for some time that Grapefruit League action, such as it is, was scheduled to begin for these Toronto Blue Jays on this the third day of the third month in the year of our lord 2012, but somehow this managed to sneak up on me all the same. Fortunately, the thoughtful folks at MLB.com went ahead and signed me up for another year of GameDay Audio without me even having to ask! Can you believe it? So I am all set! As is my favourite douchebag in all the world Brett Lawrie, who hit two two-run doubles today, so he remains on pace to be literally the greatest hitter in the history of professional baseball (I will overlook today's error). Nine pitchers took the hill for the Blue Jays, which only ever happens in the first week of spring training games or I guess in the All-Star Game, too, sometimes, and the not-as-fat-as-previously Brett Cecil got the start but not the all-important win, which instead went to Kyle Drabek, who pitched a scoreless inning and struck a guy out so it's like :) SMOKE but also he walked a guy so it is also like :( and so on the whole is like :/ which is the probably the best case scenario for Kyle Drabek this season.


I would also like to call your attention to Eric Thames, who homered today, and who I fully support in the battle for the everyday spot in left field because he not only reads but totally gets Beowulf and also sketches out plans for his facial hair but most importantly he is not Travis Snider. If one is a fan of the Toronto Blue Jays one is supposed to be of the opinion that Snider has been jerked around between the majors and triple-A to such an extent that his confidence lies in ruins and he is a broken man and probably this is mostly Cito's fault, or something, but on the whole he is a dude who has looked less like a dude than a butt, if I may be frank, and I am sure we all agree that the proper place for butts is on the bench. Anyway, go Eric Thames: you are skilled, maybe, and I exhort you. 

moustaches for all imo

I'm listening to the replay of the radio broadcast right now man and Alan Ashby and Jerry Howarth are cold killin' it on day one like I mean killin' it and I just heard a couple of little girls singsong something about raffle tickets and I don't care that it is the grossest day ever outside as the wind howls around my creaky old house because baseball is here and not in the abstract way where there are dudes who sometimes play baseball jogging in uniforms and stretching somewhere but in the very real sense that games are being played and I am listening to them which at the end of the day is what this is all about is it not my friends? 


KS

Fergie Jenkins Stamps: Totally Going on All of My Letters

Above: a thing that is awesome. Above that: Ferguson Jenkins, also awesome.

I am pretty strictly a one-stamp-at-a-time kind of guy, because who needs to tie up six whole dollars in a little packet of stamps to take home from the post office? That's six dollars that could be used in other financial wheelings/dealings. "No thanks," I can be heard to say to the nice girl who works at the post office, or even to the older lady who always seems rushed, "Just the one stamp, please."  But I bought a whole pack of these because, as you can see, they are awesome.  Ferguson Jenkins is, and will remain for some time, the only Canadian inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame (yours, not ours, of which he is also a member, but which, quite rightly, nobody really knows anything about).  He is also tied with Robertson Davies as the raddest guy to come out of the Chatham-Kent region. Unlike Davies, Jenkins did not work in the mode of magic realism, but, unlike Jenkins, Davies was not also a member of the Harlem Globetrotters. It really is a tie.  


Also, today I bought MLB Gameday Audio for the year: $20 gets you radio (the most decorous of baseball media in my view), both home and away, for every regular season game, every post-season game, and a whack of spring training, which I am enjoying right now.  It's still pretty snowy outside but there are crocuses and even tulips starting to peak out here and there in my front yard right up against the house which is maybe more a sign of how my house seriously needs to be re-insulated than it is a sign of spring but whatever, man, Jerry Howarth just meandered from the Caspar Wells home run to the fact that when Jerry's son Brent took piano lessons in the fourth grade the first sheet music he wanted was the theme from Ghostbusters.  "Who ya gonna call?" Jerry asked.  "Who?  Casper Wells."  Just, what?  Why?  I don't know but I love it. Like, I get it, but why?

Left: Jerry Howarth, who is the best. Right: Alan Ashby, also the best.

And after the game they're going to talk to Chris Woodward, who you might recall as a player with whom my problem never was.  Oh shit, update: "And there she goes! A three-run blast for Brett Lawrie! The Blue Jays have tied the Detroit Tigers here in the bottom of the eighth inning!"  


YEEEEEEAAAAAAHHHHH BASEBALL ON THE RADIO YEEEEEEAAAAAAHHHHH

KS