Oh, how I love baseball
Nationals 1, Giants 0 with a couple of walks and a sacrifice fly. This pitcher's got nothing. Look at all those walks. We'll get to him.
Nationals 1, Giants 1 on a Barry Bonds* homerun to the upper deck of right field. And even as I hold my asterisk higher, I can't help but think: I just saw the 706th homerun in Barry Bonds's career.
Nationals 2, Giants 1 when Brad Wilkerson singles home Brian Schneider. Seems like this pitcher settled down quite a bit, seeing how it's now the fifth inning and two isn't a lot of runs. But a lead is a lead.
Ninth Inning: Bonds* due up 4th, meaning that the Nationals need to get one of the first three batters out to avoid facing him. Livian Hernandez, my wife's first Favorite Player(tm) on the mound, completely spent. The Giants try anything to get a runner on -- Randy Wynn and Omar Vizquel both bunt foul on the first pitches of their at bats. Vizquel eventually walks on some highly questionable calls. When did the strike zone get so small?
Two outs, Darth Vader walks up to the plate, manager Frank "Grady" Robinson strides to the mound where a conference agrees that Livian, who has thrown 121 pitches, should pitch to the most dangerous batter in baseball history. Sort of. Four balls, all of them probably outside but maybe not. Either way, There are now runners on first and second with the relatively dangerous Moises (or Moses, as the RFK announcer likes to call him) Alou at the plate and facing the corpse of an exhausted Hernandez.
Giants 4, Nationals 2 as the ball lands in the Nationals' bullpen in left field. Maybe the reliever who should have been in the game catches it, but it's hard to see.
Giants 4, Nationals 3 ... runners on first and second, two outs, bottom of the ninth inning. Brad Wilkerson at the plate, who gave the team a lead earlier in the evening. The third National run had scored on a sacrifice fly from highly touted young 'un Ryan Zimmerman, a ball that might have been a homerun in another park Then again, a lot of hits have died on the warning track tonight.
A long fly ball to deep left field ... and as the ball hangs in the air and 25,000 remaining fans hold their collective breath and the pitcher turns to watch and I hug my scorecard wondering, counting, watching ... I realize that I love baseball so much that it just doesn't matter to me whether the ball lands, and Wilkerson is the hero, or if it is caught, and Alou is the hero. And as if to mock my lusty neutrality of the outcome but heartfelt love of the game itself, the left fielder -- a defensive replacement of Bonds who has just entered the game and has certainly never seen a game at RFK before much less played here and is he fully stretched or is he even a good fielder, because I've never heard of this guy and even Bonds misplayed a fly ball a little in the first inning so maybe the ball carries a little funny here -- dives. And catches it. Three outs.
Take that, football.
Nationals 1, Giants 1 on a Barry Bonds* homerun to the upper deck of right field. And even as I hold my asterisk higher, I can't help but think: I just saw the 706th homerun in Barry Bonds's career.
Nationals 2, Giants 1 when Brad Wilkerson singles home Brian Schneider. Seems like this pitcher settled down quite a bit, seeing how it's now the fifth inning and two isn't a lot of runs. But a lead is a lead.
Ninth Inning: Bonds* due up 4th, meaning that the Nationals need to get one of the first three batters out to avoid facing him. Livian Hernandez, my wife's first Favorite Player(tm) on the mound, completely spent. The Giants try anything to get a runner on -- Randy Wynn and Omar Vizquel both bunt foul on the first pitches of their at bats. Vizquel eventually walks on some highly questionable calls. When did the strike zone get so small?
Two outs, Darth Vader walks up to the plate, manager Frank "Grady" Robinson strides to the mound where a conference agrees that Livian, who has thrown 121 pitches, should pitch to the most dangerous batter in baseball history. Sort of. Four balls, all of them probably outside but maybe not. Either way, There are now runners on first and second with the relatively dangerous Moises (or Moses, as the RFK announcer likes to call him) Alou at the plate and facing the corpse of an exhausted Hernandez.
Giants 4, Nationals 2 as the ball lands in the Nationals' bullpen in left field. Maybe the reliever who should have been in the game catches it, but it's hard to see.
Giants 4, Nationals 3 ... runners on first and second, two outs, bottom of the ninth inning. Brad Wilkerson at the plate, who gave the team a lead earlier in the evening. The third National run had scored on a sacrifice fly from highly touted young 'un Ryan Zimmerman, a ball that might have been a homerun in another park Then again, a lot of hits have died on the warning track tonight.
A long fly ball to deep left field ... and as the ball hangs in the air and 25,000 remaining fans hold their collective breath and the pitcher turns to watch and I hug my scorecard wondering, counting, watching ... I realize that I love baseball so much that it just doesn't matter to me whether the ball lands, and Wilkerson is the hero, or if it is caught, and Alou is the hero. And as if to mock my lusty neutrality of the outcome but heartfelt love of the game itself, the left fielder -- a defensive replacement of Bonds who has just entered the game and has certainly never seen a game at RFK before much less played here and is he fully stretched or is he even a good fielder, because I've never heard of this guy and even Bonds misplayed a fly ball a little in the first inning so maybe the ball carries a little funny here -- dives. And catches it. Three outs.
Take that, football.
posted by Josh at
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
1 Comments:
As the Boston Red Sox were poised to win the World Series last year, did you realize that you love baseball so much that it didn't matter whether the Cardinals won?
By
dl004d, at 10:45 AM
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