Month: June 2006

The Florida Marlins are rebuilding with a rookie skipper at the helm. Yet they had one nine straight games before losing 4-0 to Baltimore. Dontrelle Willis & Brian Moehler are the only Marlins who’ve answered affirmatively to the question, “Who wants to be a millionaire?”, $4,350,000 for DW and $1,500,000 for BM. Florida’s payroll is 30th among MLB teams at $14.3 million. The NY Yankees rank #1 at $198.6 million. Joe Girardi is the rookie manager for these overachievers. Girardi learned his smarts at Northwestern University and learned his winning ways from Joe Torre & the Yankees. It won’t be long before the Marlins are back in the playoff picture for years to come, built on a solid foundation. But they may have to change locations, as there seem to be a lot of distractions in South Florida, and fans have too many other things to do, go figure.

I know the issue is all about profanity and the word fag to describe Sun Times writer Jay Mariotti. Don’t get me wrong, Ozzie Guillen should have chosen better words to describe Mariotti. I do understand however what ticked Ozzie off. Jay has jumped on Ozzie Guillen from the word go. Recently Mariotti was all over Guillen because Ozzie had relief pitcher Sean Tracey farmed out for refusing to follow orders and hit Hank Blalock. Guillen was trying to protect his hitters, his job is to win ballgames, and in this game Texas pitcher Vicente Padilla hit A.J. Pierzynski twice with pitches. Padilla does have a propensity for hitting batters, but still has only hit 59 batters among the over 3,600 batters he has faced.

Lately sports guys on TV, radio, and in the newspaper have taken to controversy. It shouldn’t surprise these guys when their subjects explode. Makes for good copy and sells papers, I guess. Writing in the last issue of the National Jay Mariotti is the same guy who wrote off the Bulls after they lost their first game to the Lakers in the 1991 NBA Playoffs, the Bulls rebounded to win the next four straight, and six championships in the next eight years. More recently Jay was counting down to when the Bulls would lose their 73rd game after they opened the season 0-9, they came back to make the playoffs that year. And just the other day Mariotti said Miami was too old and overmatched for the Dallas Mavericks, but that was when Dallas was up 2-0. His latest victim is Mark Cuban, saying Cuban’s big mouth has run its course. At the risk of offending weasels, Jay is one!

For the 2nd night in a row White Sox hitters smacked the crap out of Cardinal pitchers, well actually Cardinal pitcher, as starter Jason Marquis allowed thirteen earned runs (isn’t that bad luck?) in five innings. There were more Cardinal fans in the stands for this game than for the first contest. And they were more vocal than during the 1st ballgame(?). But then again, hope springs eternal, and the fans actually thought their boys were going to come back after their butt beating from the previous night. So Taguchi took Mark Buehrle over the leftfield fence in the first inning to give the Redbirds an early 1-0 lead, after the Sox scored four in the bottom of the frame, St. Louis responded with two in the top of the 2nd, but after two full innings the World Champion Chicago White Sox were up 9-3. Remarkably Marquis was left in there to surrender four more runs over the next three innings.

Paul Konerko knocked one out in the first with two runners aboard, later he fouled a ball off his leg to the delight of Cardinal fans (who really had nothing else to cheer about at that point). The fans in red behind the plate stood, clapped, and were saying, “poor baby got an owie”. Later Paulie was replaced by Ross Gload, but by then the goofballs were off at some local watering hole drowning their sorrows. In the 3rd they were still in their seats when Jim Edmonds tried in vain to keep Joe Crede’s blast in the park. He hit his head, was helped off the field, someone who sounded alot like me screamed, “SEE YOU IN FIFTEEN DAYS JIM! IT MUST BE THE BASEBALL SEASON, EDMONDS IS HURT AGAIN!” My comments were more aimed at the Redbird fans than Edmonds. The White Sox knocked four balls out of the yard (Jim Thome, Juan Uribe, Joe Crede, & Paul Konerko). St. Louis hit three out (Jim Edmonds before being knocked silly and So Taguchi & Timo Perez). What are the odds the Sox would score 33 runs in back to back games, probably not higher than Taguchi & Timo hitting longballs in the same game. On a serious note, if the Chicago kicker misses another extra point in game three his job may be in jeopardy.

Not even Albert Pujols would have made a difference in this series thus far. A cutie Cardinal fan asked, “when’s Albert coming back?” I told her that he was out looking for some JUICE. She replied, “don’t even”. I said, “he was a 19th round draft choice that turned into the Incredible Hulk”. Things that make you go HMMMM.

Took the El to the Claddagh Ring after the game where I met up with my sister in law who got Hammered & Nailed. Incredibly NickyV called it a night at the Cell, he didn’t want to be hungover when he picked up his daughter the next morning. I might be in a rut, but it’s a good rut. Weather permitting, I’m going to the Cell again for game three (wonder if I’ll need to bring my broom).

Has anyone noticed???

As of today, Ichiro has a .467 batting average this month?

I remember him starting off slow (by slow, I mean slow by Ichiro’s standards) this year but in typical Ichiro style, he’s really bringing it on.

The White Sox were ready to play when the Cubbies strongest rival came to town. It was weird to see this strange red foe on the Southside of Chicago. There really isn’t any history between the two clubs, so it was hard to know what to feel upon seeing Cardinal fans wearing their 2005 “whatever they were champion of” apparel. As the track record would indicate Sox starter Javier Vazquez surrendered a first inning run, but that wasn’t going to hold up. Mark Mulder was the Card hurler and to say he’s been struggling would be a vast understatement. The White Sox got it going in the bottom of the 3rd and before the dust had cleared there were 11 runs on the board, even Brian Anderson got an RBI double to right center. Just in case there was any doubt, Sidney Ponson was brought on to face the onslaught in the 6th inning, he hit two batters in a row, was thrown out of the game, and the Sox plated six more runs, making the score 19-2. The guy, who cleans up spilled popcorn (not all mine) behind the plate where we stand, came up to me and sez, “No good, no twenty, only 19”. In the 7th inning after Joe Crede launched a bomb to LF, he came back smiling and exclaimed, “Twenty!” David Riske got revenge by nailing Chris Duncan with a pitch, guess he won’t be farmed out. Duncan got a little revenge of his own for the Redbirds by launching a 9th inning long ball. But the four 9th inning runs scored by St. Louis didn’t mean a whole lot, final score 20-6!!!

Why’d the Phillie skipper bring Arthur Rhodes into a game against the Yankees? Rhodes has a career record against the Bronx Bombers of 4-8 with an ERA of 7.22 in 81 innings of work. But Arthur was summoned to protect a two run lead, you guessed it, a two run loss was the result. The lefty got nobody out, surrendering three hits and walking one, and was charged with four runs.

I guess I never gave it much thought, but being a White Sox fan why would I? Even though Wrigley Field has been around since 1914 (originally built for the Whales of the Federal League), the Cubs have never won a Championship while playing at the Friendly Confines. Their last title was in 1908, quickly closing in on the 100 year mark, anybody can have a bad century now & then. Last night while the Cubs were experiencing a rain delay in Cleveland, Comcast Chicago ran a feature about their old ballpark, West Side Ballpark. The Cubbies played their first 23 years in old West Side Ballpark, which was located where County (John Stroger) Hospital’s parking lot now currently sits. West Side Ballpark was very near a hospital, patients would complain about the noise. Beyond the leftfield wall was where the psych ward was, which is where the term, “out of leftfield” might have come from. Maybe that also explains some of the genealogy of Cub fans today.