Blue Jays 4, Orioles 2; Blue Jays 7, Orioles 6; Rays 12, Blue Jays 3: Where Do The Days Go

The light in Tampa: arguably worse than the light in the closed dome?

Haha woah ok yeah Blue Jays baseball, right? It has been being played, certainly! These hockey playoffs show no sign of relent, though, and a man has but a finite amount of time, I am sure you will agree, to devote to sport, to sport-feeling, and, most relevant to our conversation here I am sure you will agree once more, to sport-feeling blogging. To recap in brief, then: the Blue Jays finished well against the Orioles, and then got walloped to the extremium against the Rays last night. Foremost among those walloped was surely R. A. Dickey, who stunk, which I say without animosity but instead as the barest statement of fact, of stink-fact. Poor guy. 

Let us all be enriched, however, by the R. A. Dickey Honorary Old English Word-Hoard, which visits upon us dægcandel, "day-candle," and so "sun." Isn't that a nice one? A kenning! Which is like a super-compressed metaphor, a kind of riddling circumlocution! The term derives from the Old Norse verb kenna, "to know," and it is totally a way of knowing things, so there you go.

Hey Devon Travis is hitting like .375 with 5 home runs so far. 

KS   

Blue Jays 12, Rays 7; Rays 3, Blue Jays 2: It's Just That Hockey Playoffs

The light really is flat in there with the roof closed isn't it.

I am in favour of both Mark Beuhrle and games where Jose Bautista hits a dinger (or dingerz) so I find no joy in having not watched that one and not even having had it on the radio for even like a minute, but the hockey playoffs started, and we got oven-based snacks for that, and also a new kind of ginger ale that I am enjoying tremendously, so it was just extremely not a baseball night, you know? And last night I just wanted to read Chaucer (try it, you might like it!). 

Also, if I may be frank with you for a moment, even though the Rays got all interesting for a while and then receded to not being that interesting again I guess, I have never really cared about baseball games that the Rays were playing. This is nonsense, but it is how I feel about the Rays. I don't like their uniforms and their ballpark is dumb and I don't like how the Blue Jays play them a lot but never really play the Tigers and although that has nothing to do with the Rays I have always kind of held that against them? Also Jonah Keri's book about them was, on the level of the prose itself, just the absolute shits, if you will forgive my plain speaking on the matter.

Up next we have the Braves, and thoughts turn, of course, to the 1992 World Series which meant a pretty staggering amount more than the 1993 one even if the Joe Carter moment is obviously the singular moment from those years but should it be or should it be when Roberto Alomar homered off Eckersly in 92 in Oakland and put his arms up the second he hit it even though it ended up being kind of a squeaker just over the fence in right like how did Robbie know he had gotten enough of it how did he *know* and yet he *knew* and now he is in the Hall of Fame and should have gone in the first year except he spit on an umpire once which is an inappropriate thing to have done but also a fully human act that was long since forgiven by the man spat upon and so who are we to sit in judgement of Roberto Alomar who are we to deny him his propers.

In closing, if you haven't seen the Pillar catch, it was really good, and is here.  

Oh yeah also Jose Reyes got hurt lol.

KS  

Rays 3, Blue Jays 2: I Stopped Watching At An Appropriate Time

Above: the entire Skydome crowd for the second home game of the season

When I put this one on, it was already 2-2, and then the stream err ahhhh I mean the signal on my errrrr cable package wuuuhhhhhh wasn't working out so well so I moved on to iller matters for the remainder of the evening (not a euphemism). Later, when I learned the Blue Jays lost 3-2, I felt very good about my decision. And tonight they are already down 5-0 in the third! This home-stand is really shaping up guys!
KS

Rays 2, Blue Jays 1: It Might Also Have Been Possible to Not Send Jose Right There

nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Ah, the home opener, I know it well: you get your whole squad together and show up like twelve-deep in the 500s and listen to a bunch of drunk bro assholes start chanting "Go Leafs Go" by the fifth inning while the Blue Jays blow it to, like, the Twins, or something, and then there are fights. Maybe it doesn't happen like that anymore, exactly, who knows, as I have not been to one of these in holy shit nine years, but I expect the broad lines of the occasion remain largely unchanged; the camera seemed to luxuriate in the fresh faces of whole vast crews of dewy maidens adorned in their team-apparel finery and those too of the young suitors who suit them, which is much of what I recall of these home openers d'antan. By the second game of the season, all of these youthful funseekers will be replaced by the miserabilisit horde of fierce old ladies still mad at Homer Bush for a baserunning mistake in like 1999 and deliberately unfun young men with scorekeeping books and resolute viewz on advanced metrics; both with have little radios; neither will find any real joy. A crowd of 12 000 will be announced, but it will be a damnable lie.

BUT NOT ON OPENING DAY where a cheerful crowd north of 48 000 watched R. A. Dickey walk in the two runs that were all the Rays needed because nothing else ever really got going! Hey! You don't often say this about somebody who walked in a couple runs, but Dickey was really pretty OK, and has looked fairly good in both of his starts so far, actually. Down 2-1, Jose Bautista, who I see has a bobblehead day coming up (in a way it is strange that as a people we have not wearied of the bobblehead yet), drew a walk to lead-off the bottom of the ninth and I was like OOOOOOH SHIIIIIIIIIT and I was certainly no less that way when E5 started taking these huge rips up there as though he had fully considered how raw it would be to win the home opener with a walk-off home run and had decided this was a dare-to-be-great moment (not wrongly) that he could not let pass him by without taking mammoth fvkkn rips. 

But alas, he whiffed on a what looked like a pretty decent 3-2 fastball to hit, and Bautista, who had been sent, was out by a mile at second (or at least a quarter-mile, the length at which deeply-felt lives are sometimes lived), and that was pretty much that. 

But that's baseball, friends! It is often very much like that! And yet here we remain.

Oh hey also, since we were going to do an Old English word every R. A. Dickey start, to celebrate his Beowulf enthusiasm, let's do wealcan, which is where "walk" comes from. (I am not doing this to be mean about R. A. Dickey, because whether the runs were walked in or not [they extremely were], that was not a bad start, and Dickey has been better than a guy at work and I had decided he would be this year, and so is entitled to his propers.) 

wealcan

From Proto-Germanic *walkaną, from Proto-Indo-European *wolg- < *wel- (“to bend, twist, run, roll”). Akin to Old High German walchan, Old Norse valka, Old English ġewealcan "to go, go about, walk", Old English wealcian "to roll up, curl, twist", Old English weallian "to roam about, ramble", German wallen

Verb[edit]

wealcan

1. to move around
2. to revolve
3. to roll, roll around, be rolling
4. to toss
5. to fluctuate
6. to revolve in one's mind; scheme; reflect
7. to discuss

(That's from wiktionary.)

I don't know about you but I am already kind of excited about the next R. A. Dickey start because of all that etymology! 

KS

mathematically eliminated #13 the Tampa Bay Rays

Rays and Angels were both eliminated last night, even though both won. But the A's winning their game put the end on the season. For the Rays, their status as unheralded spoiler amidst the AL East apple cart was upset when the Orioles decided to play baseball for the first time in fifteen years. It will be interesting to see how the Rays unfold over time, as they have this rep as a solidly built young team, but they still get little fan support in a somewhat shithole locale. I mean, don't get me wrong, St. Petersburg is a chill place, kind of small towny even, and there's some awesome used book stores near the stadium. But that part of Florida is a steamroll flattened vast expanse of clustery suburbanisms, and most environments like that are full of people who don't care shit about shit but themselves. How long can the Rays hold it together?
It should be noted that my homeboy Dylan aka The Necro Butcher aka that guy who got dollar bills stapled to him in The Wrestler movie and made Mickey Rourke have a heart attack, he is a huge baseball fan, and has adopted the Rays as his team. I cannot think of the Rays without thinking of outlaw juggalo wrestler stoner guys with wild beards who were born and bred in the hills of West Virginia. It is a shame that is not their entire fanbase, because then eventually they could draw in the hipster crowds as peripheral parts of this experience, and even work out great marketing deals with Pabst Blue Ribbon and fixed gear bicycle makers and shit like that. It also would probably position them well for a move to Brooklyn a few years down the road, should that become necessary. Or fuck man, half of the baseball fans in the Tampa/St. Petersburg area are actually New Yorkers anyways, you could probably split the season's home games between Brooklyn and St. Petersburg and do pretty fucking well still. Just some ideas, you know, in case the three hits this post gets are MLB marketing dudes with a desire to initiate a bold vision for the futures.

Blue Jays 2, Rays 0; Blue Jays 2, Rays 1; Rays 5, Blue Jays 4; Rays 9, Blue Jays 4: You Know What This Was Actually Pretty Neat

slid right into his butt, like right into it

Great starts from Carlos Villanueva and Brandon Morrow, back-to-back games ending with dudes thrown out at the plate, and tight, low-scoring affairs that could totally have gone either way, I mean, shoot, that sounds pretty awesome, does it not? And indeed it was! Were it not for Ricky Romero getting absolutely pasted beyond all recognition in the series finale on Sunday afternoon -- 1 IP, 8 H, 7 R, 7 ER, 1 BB, 0 K, 1 HR -- this would have been nothing but good times, man, nothing at all. But yeah, the Romero start, his worst ever, and pretty much the worst you could ever possibly see, took a little bit of the shine off an otherwise excellent weekend of baseball, the Blue Jays series I have enjoyed most in a long time (because I kind of whiffed on the Yankees series, to be honest). 

I would like to point out, in case you had not noticed which is entirely possible, that E5 is now up to 37 HR, which is utterly ridiculous. Not that it would have made that much difference to the shape of the season or anything, but wouldn't it have been cool if Jose Bautista's wrist hadn't exploded and both these awesome dudes hit forty-plus dingers? Boy. Boy.

KS

Rays 3, Blue Jays 2; Rays 7, Blue Jays 1: Seriously I Don't Even Know Who These Guys Are

E5 takin' it back

Just some crazy fucking line ups these days, man. It's just a situation. At least Jose Bautista is ready to start hitting off a tee! But also Brett Lawrie is on the DL. And now the Yankees are in town. 

Revised 2012 prediction: the Toronto Blue Jays will lose one thousand games.

KS

Rays 4, Blue Jays 1: A Disappointing Return To A Reasonable Time Zone

 you don't see a lot of photos of a dude just routinely sliding back safely but I like this one

You know what, it occurs to me that it is possible that J. A. Happ is not the answer. Had that occurred to you? Oh OK, it totally had; I see. I am as pleased as anyone (and arguably also punch) to see Colby Rasmus ding a solo dinger but it was far too little on this night and so here we are. 

KS

Rays 8, Blue Jays 5; Rays 5, Blue Jays 4 (F/11): Shucks

dang

This really didn't go as well as I'd hoped it might. Especially yesterday, even though it was the closer and better game: Ricky Romero was not at all his usual bosslike self, which is distressing to me. Jose Bautista has maybe turned the corner a little, though, as he was 5-9 with a dinger over the last two days, and if we are going to hang in this thing over the long haul and we are totally going to hang in this over the long haul right guys then we need Bautista to be drop megaton bombs more faster than you blink.


KS  

Blue Jays 6, Rays 2: Call It What You Want, Girl; I'll Just Call It Smoke

"no no seriously it hit a thing and this place is a joke so it's a dinger man seriously"

Delighted though I am by Kyle Drabek's fairly rad six innings of three-hit ball, and cheered though I was by the Rays booting it around and pretty much giving this one away, all I can think about is how lame it was how amazingly lame it was when B. J. Upton hit one off just like a fuckin thing in the roof, like the bottom of a catwalk or something, and the ball fell to the ground in front of Rasmus in centre, and it was a home run, according the ground rules. What is this, Dusty Diamond's All-Star Softball? I don't think it is, because if it was, I would be finding this situation much more charming than I am presently. Also I would select "Diablo," because that kid could straight-up rake with that hell club thing he had.

Diablo knows only dingerz

KS

Rays 4, Blue Jays 3: You Will Be Missed, Brett Lawrie

this makes it look worse than it was, but only a little

Yes, I am disappointed that the Blue Jays kicked the ball around to the tune of four errors yeah four errors last night, but I am so used to losing to David Price that I am pretty much over that already. This is in part because of a most unpleasant distraction from the loss itself in the form of Brett Lawrie wildin' out on home plate umpire Bill Miller, after Miller took offense at Lawrie leaving the box early on a pitch that was so far outside as to be indisputably a ball, but even so, bro, even so. Miller, whose intention was pretty clearly to, you know, teach the kid a lesson, made an embarrassingly bad call, and then just a regular ol' bad call for strike three on the next pitch. Both were balls, though the second one was close enough that in any other circumstance you wouldn't really raise an eyebrow at it. But you really have got to think Miller himself knew they were balls and was basically just insisting on getting his dick out. 


And that kind of thing happens around young players all the time, right? Like, nobody thinks it's right (do they?), but everybody knows that it happens, right? It's baseball. It has been that way for at least the near thirty years I have been watching, and it will probably continue to be that way until robots. It was nothing special, or didn't have to be, except that it was as one-run game, bottom of the ninth, and the pretty remarkably hot-headed Brett Lawrie probably already felt like a butt because of a throwing error earlier, and so this happened:

Well OK not really but mostly:

Yikes, right? This is not Delmon Young chucking a bat a dude, but it is on the spectrum. Yeah, it bounced in the dirt (Mr. Splitty stylee), which is maybe like the tiniest bit mitigating, but Lawrie is so getting suspended for this one, man. There is just no other way. The MLBPA is awesome so maybe they can awesome it down to a mere five gamer or something, but I honestly wouldn't be stunned if this comes out at or around twenty. Why don't we just call it ten? Would that be cool for everybody?


An excellent "stay classy" moment followed as the umpires left the field:

Finally, let's just see if I actually know how to embed things . . .



OK I guess I can.


Anyway, all around, a pleasant evening at the old ballyard, eh fellows?


KS

Rays 7, Blue Jays 1: Ask Me What I Think About Adam Lind's Second Error of the Night Opening the Door to a Six-Run Fifth

hey here's one Adam Lind caught last night good job bro

Seriously, seriously, for real this time: ask me.


KS

Rays 12, Blue Jays 2: Well That One Got A Little Crazy At The End

this one he did not in fact catch

Obviously it didn't actually matter, but that six-run top of the ninth was a hell of a thing, was it not? But the long and the short of this one is that David Price always kills the Blue Jays, and I still have no faith in Brandon Morrow, and so here we are. Jose Bautista made a cool catch in the first, and if Adam Lind wasn't lollygagging in the infield he might have thrown a dude out on a sharply struck ball to right in the same inning, but of course Adam Lind was lollygagging around the infield because he is just so awesome a guy that he doesn't even have to play smart or hard and we will all forgive him because of his astounding production. Oh hey also: a lady who was at the park today with her awesome dog was telling this guy, "You know that home run Bautista hit last night? One of the guys I just went to Cuba with caught that ball! I read about it on Facebook." So there you go, that's a thing that happened. 


Anyway, my contention is that we'll get 'em tomorrow. 


KS

Rangers 4, Rays 3: Nice Ups, Adrian Beltre

Touch 'em all

Jeremy Hellickson is a philosophical problem: if you are a pitcher who throws pretty much nothing but changeups, do you actually throw a changeup at all? This is not strictly speaking true, this thing I have just said about Jeremy Hellickson, but dang does that guy throw a lot of changeups! Ian Kinsler hit the second pitch of the game (a changeup) out of the park, and Adrian Beltre hit three solo home runs as the Rangers edged the Rays to make their second ALCS appearance in a row, which is pretty rad of and for them. Good series, guys! I would like to note in closing that this deciding game was played before a truly lousy crowd of 28,299, making it the worst-attended MLB playoff game in thirty years. Good job, Tampa! 

Huzzah!

Nolan Ryan and Ron Washington and also some other guy (far left)

KS

Rangers 4, Rays 3: Another Dandy!

If thinking about Ron Washington makes you any less happy than Ron Washington himself appears in the above photo, then you have missed the point of literally everything ever and I don't know that we can even continue this conversation, frankly.

Holy cow! What a game! Headed into the seventh, the only run either team had scored came on the Rays only hit, a Desmond Jennings solo shot in the fourth. But then! A four-run Texas seventh: Mike Napoli, who was unawesomely traded by the Blue Jays for Frank Francisco only to go on to have perhaps the third-best offensive season ever by a catcher, hit a two run shot; and Josh Hamilton pulled a single into right to plate a pair. The Rays chipped away -- and Desmond Jennings hit another one out, no big deal -- but Neftali Feliz nailed down the four-out save to, well, to save it, really. 


Baseball!


KS

Rangers 8, Rays 6: For Shame, Big Game James, For Shame

Yikes

Until James Shields fell apart in the home half of the fourth, things looked pretty desperate for Texas: in the first, Derek Holland walked Kelly Shoppach with the bases loaded, which is totally the least auspicious way to allow a run (with a balk, at least, there is the relief of novelty), and in the top of the fourth Holland got two quick outs before he threw the ball away trying to get Casey Kotchman at first and promptly surrendered a two-run shot off the bat of Matt Joyce. So, not only were the Rangers down by three, but they were down by three runs scored in galling circumstances. However! Shields just totally lost it in the fourth, hitting two batters and throwing two wild pitches to go with three singles in the inning. That wasn't quite enough for the Rangers, because Evan Longoria, who continues to insist on being ridiculous, launched a three-run homer in the seventh, so as it turned out it was totally worthwhile for Ian Kinsler to knock in a couple with a double in the sixth. Good job, everybody except James Shields! (Also Koji Uehara.)

KS   

Rays 9, Rangers 0: Kelly Shoppach, Home Run Hero?

Dr, Pepper IS the one-of-a-kind fan favourite, that is TRUE.

Momentum is a tricky thing to talk about in baseball. A favourite aphorism of mine is Earl Weaver's "Momentum is the next day's starting pitcher," because, well, yeah, totally. What if the next day's starter is almost entirely untested rookie? Then you would probably be boned, right? Sure, he had looked awesome in the very limited action he had seen so far, but could anyone have anticipated a two-hitter in Matt Moore's second career start? Or, putting that unlikelihood aside, even, how about two home runs from Kelly Shopach, he of the .176 batting average and .607 OPS? All of that was pretty neat, but neatest of all was an early home run from Johnny Damon, who, after all these years, I still find particularly, especially neat. C. J. Wilson, who has one of the best post-home-run headshakes in the game, was shaking up a storm yesterday, and I never would have guessed, man, I never would have guessed. 


I would also like to mention that while Josh Hamilton is getting a lot of flack from baseball nerds for bunting while down a million runs, the third basemen was playing way off the line, and although it was scored a  sacrifice, Hamilton was bunting for a hit, so settle down, internet: they needed baserunners, and he was trying to get on.  


In the end, though, Hamilton was left looking like this --

I'm ronery . . . so ronery . . .

-- and one can only assume that, wherever he was, our dear friend and resident Rangers fan, Chinballs, wasn't looking any happier. 


Poor, sweet Chinballs . . .


KS