Baseball 2012

[The Minsky Moment]

What a whinny bitch

So is it a horse or a dog?

[MadBurgerMaker]

First time I've caught a game with Yu Darvish as the SP.  Dude is for real.  He had a minor meltdown in the first inning (~30 pitches, 2 ER on only 1 hit...walk, hit the next guy, then Fielder hit a double), then chilled out and looked solid through the 7th.  I assume he's coming out now with 110 or so pitches and a two run lead.  Ten strikeouts, 4 ER, 1 walk, 4 hits.

E:  Make that a three run lead now.  Hamilton just crushed one.

[dps]

First time I've caught a game with Yu Darvish as the SP. 

I didn't even know that you were a catcher, much less in the majors. 

[MadBurgerMaker]

Posting from the dugout!

E:  I just realized me being the Rangers catcher today would mean my first name is:  Yorvit.  Not sure how I feel about that.

[jimmy olsen]

Jeter's hitting .305 this year and is poised to pas Cal Ripken into 14th place on the all time hit list. Should make the top 9 easy, and could go all the way #4 if he holds up over the next few years.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/H_career.shtml

[Valmy]

Arizona Wildcats win the College World Series.

I don't follow it much but it sounds like it was an improbable run.  Good for them and the Pac-12.

It was sort of a meh series after an amazing and exciting Super Regional round.  Which surprised me with surprise participants like Stony Brook and Kent State along with some of the more glamour teams like Florida State and UCLA.  Still very glad the Wildcats won they were long overdue for another title and, generally, if Texas and the Big XII cannot win it (and lets face it if Texas isn't nobody else in Big XII is) I always root for the PAC-12 and the rest of the western conferences.  The best baseball players are from California and I generally think their style of play is more exciting than in the south.  Not sure what kids do in the Northern US but play Baseball is certainly not one of them.

[Ed Anger]

BEHEAD ALL WHO INSULT NICK SWISHER

[Sophie Scholl]

BEHEAD ALL WHO INSULT NICK SWISHER

  Despite being a Yankee, he's probably my favorite current player.

[Syt]

Burnett (9-2) allowed three runs and six hits, striking out seven. The winning streak is his longest, and it's the first time a Pirates pitcher has won eight in a row since Dock Ellis in 1974.

[katmai]

After three game sweep of Dodgers where Giants shut them out in every game, tonight M. Bumgarner  (10-4)  one hit the Reds for 4th straight shut out and Los Gigantes are now in 1st place

[Syt]

After three game sweep of Dodgers where Giants shut them out in every game, tonight M. Bumgarner  (10-4)  one hit the Reds for 4th straight shut out and Los Gigantes are now in 1st place

That reminds me of that one time when ESPN over here showed a football game of the NY Giants - and for some reason the on screen display was all in Spanish. Los Gigantes de Nuevo York? Seriously?

[sbr]

Burnett (9-2) allowed three runs and six hits, striking out seven. The winning streak is his longest, and it's the first time a Pirates pitcher has won eight in a row since Dock Ellis in 1974.

Have I mentioned how much I liked Burnett in Pittsburgh? 

[Ed Anger]

The Reds stink on the West Coast. And in Interleague play.

[Syt]

Wow, the Bucs really broke out the bats tonight.

[CountDeMoney]

From the San Diego News--poor Padres fans 

You are to blame for the Padres TV fiasco
Matthew T. Hall

I can count the number of Padres at-bats I've seen on TV this season on my son's southpaw.

The joke here isn't that my left-handed son can help the hometown nine. It's that I don't have a son.

It is absolutely ludicrous that I can't turn on my TV whenever the Padres play — a luxury after a long day, even with a losing team — and watch the game or just have it on in the background as I surf the web, talk to my wife (she would spy another joke there) or go to sleep.

A ton of criticism has been lobbed at Fox Sports San Diego, Time Warner Cable, AT&T U-Verse and Dish for the impasses that have kept about 40 percent of San Diego County residents from watching the Padres from home this year.

It's not nearly enough criticism. The fact that they can't get a deal done — and may not this season — is just ridiculous. If not now, when?

I don't care who it is, no new owner is going to ride into a town on a white Charger or sprinkle the team's bats with fairy dust and turn the Padres into winners overnight. It'll take time. It'll take talent. It'll take buy-in from the nine guys on the field at any given time and from that 10th player: the fans in the stadium. And the best way to get buy-in from fans (all of whom are long-suffering, whether by definition or in high-definition) is to get the games on TV.

There are more people to blame than television execs, of course.

Let's start at the top.

If and when a Padres sale happens, it looks like lame-duck (a lot of fans would now just say lame) team owner John Moores and his family will see about half of the $800 million in proceeds. That includes $200 million in upfront money the team got from a new, 20-year TV deal with Fox Sports.

Couldn't Moores and Jeff Moorad, whose group owns 49 percent of the team, have made sure Fox's deals with distributors got done? Couldn't Moores have pressured, even shamed, all sides so La Jolla viewers like me and others across the county could watch their team? Shouldn't that be a priority in this day and age?

Next to Moores on the Mount Rushmore of blame, I'm putting San Diego's mayor, Jerry Sanders, and its City Council president, Tony Young, who have been silent on the issue.

Can you imagine how fast the politicians in a city like Boston or New York would be lashing out at every TV executive in town to soothe the masses?

I'm from Massachusetts. If a team were blacked out on TV once, I can tell you that fans — a group that includes most New Englanders with a pulse and many without one — would take to the streets with bats of their own.

I can also tell you that New Yorkers faced just this circumstance this year. State and local pols there stepped up in February to end a standoff between the MSG Network and Time Warner Cable.

New York City Council speaker Christine Quinn threatened to hold a hearing that would bring executives from each company before an outraged public. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo even made phone calls to hasten a deal. Finally, TV executives restored MSG programming, which includes the Knicks, Rangers and Islanders sports teams, for 1.1 million households.

Admittedly, there was also the little matter of Linsanity that spurred that deal along. (Sadly, in San Diego, the only baseball player even remotely close to breakout basketball star Jeremy Lin is all-star Huston Street, and no one's really rushing to trademark: "Huston, we have a problem.")

New York pols stepped to the plate after seven weeks. In San Diego, we're at 13 and counting. And what do you hear from our politicians? Crickets.

So who's the fourth face deserving of mountainous criticism for this mess?

Yours.

Padres fans should be up in arms, southpaw or otherwise. They should be writing letters to the newspaper, flooding the team and TV companies with emails and phone calls, protesting outside Petco Park with pitchforks.

And they aren't.

Who cares that the Padres were the fastest team to reach 50 losses this year. Or that every other team has scored more runs than them. Bottom line is they can't get much worse, and we're a baseball town. It's summer. We should be able to decide whether we watch (semi?) professional baseball or not.

And you know what? I finally found a politician who agrees with me.

He's congressional candidate and La Jolla resident Scott Peters.

Fed up at both my inability to watch the team and the fans' seeming indifference, I tweeted this Sunday: "Hey Time Warner cable customers: The Padres are 30-50. Now back to your regularly scheduled not caring about not seeing them."

Peters tweeted back: "Disagree! Think your Boston would tolerate this even in the down years? It's ridiculous."

"Sorry," longtime journalist and Los Angeles Dodgers fan David Ogul chimed in. "Padres are not worth watching."

Replied Peters, "I'd like to be able to decide that myself."

The conversation even spurred a tweet from top mayoral aide Gerry Braun.

"I also thought nothing could keep me from watching the Padres on TV," he wrote. "But then the Padres found a way. Funny town."

Braun's boss may have missed his tweet. I hope he doesn't miss this column.[/quote\