The Baseball Zealot

This headline says it all:

According to the Houston Chronicle, Shaun Dean has to feel pretty lucky.  He not only caught Lance Berkman’s grand slam in Houston’s clincher over Atlanta on Sunday but also caught the game-winning homer hit by Chris Burke in the 18th inning. 

Dean has planned to give the balls back to Astros and most likely get cash and /or prizes in compensation.

I’m back online after putting in a lot of extra hours at work last week.  So much so that I hardly had enough time to keep up with what was going on in the baseball world.

So I was glad to see that the teams I’m rooting for are winning.  The Cards made easy work of the Padres.  The White Sox took care of the Red Sox.  And while I don’t particularly care for either the ‘Stros or the Braves, I’m happy to see Houston win.  

Now if only the Angels can defeat the Yankees.  At this point, it is 5-2 in the 6th. 

The Chicago White Sox FINALLY did it!!! It was a long time coming. There were alot of nay sayers out there, not the least of which was Jay Mariotti. Seems like only yesterday he was predicting gloom & doom on the Southside of Chicago. The Southside of Chicago is the baddest part of town and if you go down there you better just beward of a man named Leroy Brown, oh yeah, & the Chicago White Sox!!!

The last time the White Sox won the World Series was 1917, before the Black Sox Scandal, before the baseball commissioner took it upon himself to gut the ballclub of its stars. Why oh why couldn’t we have a baseball commissioner like Bud Selig who must’ve been better at selling used cars than he is at running MLB??? Somehow I believe Selig would have had to have taken the bets himself to have believed any wrong doing among the Black Sox. Rafael Palmeiro is still the ONLY major league baseball player nailed to the wall for taking steroids, even though just looking at Barry Bonds you’d know he’s been on the juice. But surely I digress…

This is about the White Sox backing in to capture the AL Central Crown. Not really sure how you can back into anything with the 2nd best record in baseball. And even though NOBODY predicted the White Sox for post season play, support for Ozzie Guillen for AL Manager of the Year seems to have disappeared. Not sure I understand why. Eric Wedge seems to have gained momentum, even though the Cleveland Indians might not even make the AL playoffs as a wild card team. Congrats to Ozzie Guillen & his GO GO WHITE SOX!!! Here’s hoping for a CHICAGO WHITE SOX CHAMPIONSHIP!!! GO SOX GO!!!

Nick & I drove 12 hours from Toronto to Chicago a week ago Sunday. The trip wasn’t that bad, even though it was made worse by the fact that I developed some type of upper resp thingy Saturday night (hope I’m not allergic to stripper’s perfume). Monday I extended my baseball trip one more night by going to the Cell to see if the White Sox could win one against the hard charging Ceveland Indians. I wish somebody could get those “naked Ozzie” pictures away from Damaso Marte. The White Sox took the lead in the bottom of the 7th 5-4 after trailing 4-0, but then Ozzie made some bad decisions. Rather than either leaving Neal Cotts in to pitch the top of the 8th or bring in Cliff Politte, Guillen started off with Luis Vizcaino getting Jhonny Peralta before giving way to Marte. Damaso walked the hot hitting Travis Hafner, Victor Martinez got a double, and then Ben Broussard struckout. With the go ahead run on 2nd fastball pitcher Bobby Jenks was brought on to get fastball hitter Aaron Boone, who ripped a two run single off a Jenks’ fastball to give the Tribe the lead. Then Dustin Hermanson gave up an insurance run in the 9th before Bob Wickman set the Sox down for a 7-5 Indian winner. GO SOX GO!!!

Halfway to driving from Pittsburgh to Toronto to see the Bronx Bombers battle the Toronto Blue Jays, Nick checked our tickets. Sure enough the game was a 4:05 start rather a 7:05 PM start, OOPS! We ended up getting to our seats in the 3rd inning. The Yankees had already scored the only run that would be scored that afternoon, not really sure how. Gustavo Chacin of the Blue Jays was matched up against Shawn Chacon for the Yanks, with Chacon coming out on the winning side. The surprise came when Yankee skipper Joe Torre called on Flash Gordon rather than Mariano Rivera to close out the game.

First time to Toronto… The ballpark is a typical indoor facility, felt like a shopping mall. Thus far there have been 47 shootings in Toronto, which has Canadians up in arms. 47 shootings is a good weekend in Chicago. U2 was playing in town, but we had more important things to get to after the game. First we grabbed some Thai food and then checked out a local club. The cover was only $6.00 Canadian, which is almost nothing American. The club was awesome, all the girls were beautiful, and nobody was stuck on themselves. And our parking only cost $3.00 Canadian, which is like why even bother. Got to talking with the parking guy from Iraq, he left in 1992. He was telling me how his 19 year old cousin was recently killed by an Apache helicopter, she was 8 months pregnant, no wonder they’re not having parades for us!

I’m watching a meaningless game on TV between the Washington Nationals and the San Francisco Giants. The Nats are playing alot of their youngsters, namely 20 year old rookie Ryan Zimmerman and 32 year old rookie Rick Short. The long and the short (no pun intended) of it just combined on back to back doubles to knock Giant starter Brett Tomko out of the game. Well anyway the announcers keep talking about Rick Short. Turns out the Elgin, IL native attended Western Illinois University and got his first call up to the show this season, he cried when told he was being called up. Short batted .383, with 35 doubles, 11 HRs, walked 46 times, while only striking out 27 times while playing this year for the New Orleans Zephyrs.