De Camp Town Racers

They sing that song, all day long, Duda, Duda ... 

The surname of a second Mets player can be found in Stephen Foster's lyrics: Jason Bay. Someone bet on him. But you can't write about betting and baseball in the same blog post. 

Neither Bay nor Lucas Duda hit a home run today, or even a bases-clearing triple. 

The Metropolitans, in fact, tamely submitted to the offerings of Justin Verlander and two relievers, scoring only two harmless runs on ten harmless hits, none of which came with two out and the bases loaded. 

Andy Dirks homered -- his third circuit blast in the Tigers' last three games -- for their fifth and last run.

With the Indians idle, the Tigers now have a half-game lead in the AL Central race, with the world champion Government Issue Insects -- the G.I. Ants -- in town for a three-game weekend series.

Jets 16, Lions 9

You can't miss a game. You never know what you might see. Maybe something you've never seen before, and might not see again.

The few hundred who hung around at Comerica until the bitter end, and the scattered handfuls who hadn't already turned the game off, got to see, and hear, Don Kelly get the last out. 

Skipper Leyland called on the most versatile Pretender to pitch because David Purcey couldn't get anyone out, he'd all night watched pitchers not get Mets' hitters out, and he didn't want to use Benoit or Valverde for one out while losing 16-9. 

They hit five home runs and lost by seven to a team that didn't hit any home runs. Something else you won't see again in a long time.

The Metropolitans scored 16 times without a gluttonous bat-around and then some inning. Four was the most they scored in any one frame. They did it with one triple, four doubles, and fifteen singles. A collective effort. They all put the yeast in.

Phil Coke lasted three batters into the fifth and gave up eight runs. The once-reliable Coke is now 1-8, and his ERA is almost five. His night was symptomatic of the recent woes Pretender starting pitchers not named Justin Verlander have experienced.

And guess what? There's a day game tomorrow. The only starter who is named Justin Verlander will pitch. His games are already can't-miss baseball.

Carrie Jacobs-Bond In Reverse

The pieces began to fall into place this afternoon, when the Giants won the first game of a day-night doubleheader at Wrigley. Tigers and Dodgers lost. Giants won the second game. Both New York teams won. Braves have won in Seattle to complete the picture. End Of An Imperfect Day, accomplished with one more game (the second Giants-Cubs game) than the minimum number required.

Jets 14, Lions 3 -- But Then ...

Meet the Mets, greet the Mets, go on out and get beat by the Mets. 

That they did, in spectacular fashion tonight. Rick Porcello, for the fourth consecutive outing, didn't have it. Daniel Schlereth added his name to the infamous list of pitchers who've allowed two grand slams in the same game; blasts by Jason Bay and Carlos Beltran. 

However ... 

Our nemesis from the Arizona series, Wily Mo Pena, pinch-hit a walkoff homer off Tony Sipp that beat the Indians 5-4 in Phoenix. 

So the Tigers lose no ground to the Tribe, and keep their one game lead in the AL Central race. 

Since his return to the major leagues a week ago, Wily Mo has provided the margin of victory in two games with homers. If he keeps it up and the D-Backs make post-season, he'll be the new millennium's Hurricane Hazle.

The Roaming Umperor

In tonight's make-up game with the Blue Jays, eighth inning, score tied at two, Andy Dirks bunted. Adam Lind made the play and threw to first. Umperor Ed Rapuano waited; one Mississippi, TWO Mississippi, THREE Miss ... and called Dirks safe. But his body language indicated he wasn't sure.

Jays skipper John Farrell argued. Ask for help, he said. Rapuano did, and plate ump Alfonso Marquez called Dirks out. 

So the ump closest to the play was over-ruled by one 90 feet away.  

Yes, Jim Leyland got tossed. His was among the more memorable manager raveouts of recent years, right down to mimicking Rapuano's uncertain body language and slow call, and the reversal. 

But everything's okay, since the Tigers won 4-2. 

The baseball fan wonders what might have happened had Leyland asked Jim Joyce to get some help after calling the last out of Armando Galarraga's should-have-been perfect game safe at first. 

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The Tigers, on the interleague road trip, have quietly accumulated four of the league's top ten hitters.

Cabrera and Victor Martinez are second, and third at the end of play today, at .336 and .332 respectively. Jhonny Peralta (your All-Star third baseman, vote early and often) is seventh at .311. Alex Avila (your All-Star catcher, do the same) has climbed into tenth place with a .303 average.

Extend the list, and Brennan Boesch, at .301, is 14th. 

There are only fifteen .300 hitters in the American League. The current list reminds me of batting average leaders lists in the 60s, when .296 was often good enough to make the top ten.

Pitching and hitting run in cycles. Right now, a plethora of excellent starting pitchers is keeping averages down. And, of course, the hitters aren't taking their vitamins like they once did.

What A Win On Sparky's Day!

The key at-bats weren't at bats. They were walks, by Casper Wells and Magglio Ordonez, with two out in the eighth and the Tigers down 2-1. 

Without them, Miguel Cabrera wouldn't have come up to single in two. And, without that hit, all the fun that followed would have never happened.

Four singles and an error plated five more runs. Eight hitters reached base with two out.

THAT'S the way you do it!

I knew they would find a way to win on the day Sparky Anderson was honored in pre-game ceremonies, when his number 11 retired.

Too bad the hatchet wasn't buried earlier, when the man who went into Cooperstown wearing a Reds cap could be honored while he was still alive. The standing ovation he would have received from a full house knowing it might be their last chance to thank him for 1984 ... wouldn't THAT have been something? 

Even after today's honoring, you still have to wonder. 

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Overlooked during this feel-good day was Ryan Strikeout's return to the Interstate (I-99) and arguably the victory's second most important contribution: getting pinch hit for, by Don Kelly who singled in the eighth to start the winning rally.

Guest Blogger: Wesley Willis

You are a right-handed starting pitcher for the Detroit Tigers!

You have an awesome fastball, curve, changeup, and slider!

Tonight you shut out the D-Backs for eight innings and struck out fourteen!

This game really whipped the race horse's ass!

I really like you a lot!

JUS-tin VER-lan-der ... JUS-tin VER-lan-der ... !

ROCK OVER LONDON

ROCK ON CHICAGO

DIET PEPSI -- UH HUH ! 

The National League DH

Wily Mo Pena last played in the major leagues for The Nationals three years ago.

The Diamondbacks brought him back for the sole purpose of being the extra bat in their lineup during this season's interleague road games.

In the eighth inning, with the score tied at six, he hit one that's still rolling through downtown Detroit. The solo homer by the D-Backs' extra bat in the lineup gave them a 7-6 win.

But let's go back to the their third inning. 

Kelly Johnson led off with a single. Justin Upton hit a grounder to Ryan Scatterarm, who threw the ball away trying to get Johnson at second. Upton, given life, scored, an unearned run. If he doesn't, Pena's homer only ties the game.

But it's okay. RS's bat will heat up any day now. We've been promised.

And What a Series It Was

They won two. We took the last one, and what a game it was. 

Casper The Friendly Outfielder led off the game with a homer. Cabrera, Ordonez, and Donnie Kelly also homered; Kelly's a pinch shot in the eighth that made it 7-5 Tigers.We scored. They scored. Ryan Strikeout struck out three times and popped out once. The Dodgers loaded the bases in the ninth, and only a leaping catch by Austin ... Jackson of Dioner Navarro's liner saved the game. In for defense, Austin Jackson, he's the man!

Throwback uniforms, half-price eats, perfect southern California weather -- for today's as well as the other two games --  two wins, one suspensful loss, an abundance of hot women to look at between innings, Vin Scully at the mike, who could ask for anything more?

Unless it was Frank McCourt's status as the former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The Surging Twins / HAHA GIANTS!

Eight runs off Madison Bumgarner before the first out was recorded. Giants down 8-0 after one inning. Yeeeha! That would really be the perfect ending to a perfect Carrie Jacobs Bond day. But it can't be, since the Dodgers and Tigers play each other. Someone has to lose.

The Twins' 9-2 win is the story. Not the Pretenders' feeble attempts at winning a baseball game. Closest they got was Miguel Cabrera pinch-hitting in the fifth, with the bases loaded, down 3-1. A well-placed hit would have turned the game around. But Teddy Bear grounded into a double play and ... well, that was that. A two-run blast by Andre Ethier, 20 rows of empty seats up in the right field pavilion, also helped enhance tonight's Dodger Stadium fan experience.

Ron Gardenhire's charges have won 15 of their last 17, are only seven games under (32-39), and have climbed out of last place in the AL Central. Not that long ago, it seems, they were twenty under, when your baseball blogger posted the kick-em-while-they're-down post. He did so because a Gardenhire-managed team is never down for very long. They aren't now, and have a knack for getting hot after the All-Star break. A fact impressed that hard way into the minds of Pretenders fans.

The Dodger Stadium Fan Experience

1000 Elysian Park Avenue has been a gloomy place this season. On opening day, a Giants fan, wearing Giants black and orange, was attacked --  by presumably Dodgers fans -- and remains unconscious. Owners Frank and Jamie McCourt have, since they bought the team in 2004, been redirecting revenue to their personal bank accounts. The Dodgers are thus broke, and may not be able to pay their players at the end of this month. Frank and Jamie are in the middle of a complicated divorce that provides yet another distraction from the game on the field. 

Dodger fans, in a show of solidarity unusual for the normally sheeplike lot that attends ball games, prove on each home date that, if people don't want to go to the ball park, no one's going to stop them. "Crowd" shots on TV show more empty seats than crowd. 

Dodger underling Steve Sobiroff, McCourt's last remaining friend within the organization, has appointed himself Vice President In Charge Of The Dodger Stadium Fan Experience.

It doesn't get much better than tonight.

Clayton Kershaw's line:  two hits, one walk 11 strikeouts, complete game shutout. One of the hits got picked off third to end the second inning. (To his credit, Ryan Pickoff wasn't one of the 11 strkeouts.) And he went 1 for 2 and batted in one of the runs. Trouble with the pitcher again; the automatic out batting ninth. Even though Kershaw, at .294, is out-hitting five Pretenders' regulars. 

All this, and no lines at the parking lot gates, bathrooms, or concession stands. No waiting for Dodger Dogs. What a fan experience.

Verlander The Stopper

When JV starts, it's hard for the Pretenders not to lose. 

This afternoon at the baseball launching pad called Coors Field, he went the distance, allowing one run, four hits and -- here's the key -- zero walks.  

B-Bash went 3 for 4, M-Cab 2 for 4, and both homered. A-Av -- your All-Star catcher, vote early and often -- also went 2 for 4 and raised his average to a robust .305. 

So much for our ancient traditional rivals from the other league's western division, the Rox. CarGo, Tu-lo, T-Wig, Eeep Ork Aah Aah, aaa-way! Thank you, Commissioner Allen H. "Bud" Selig for interleague play that allows us to visit this mountain paradise way more than is necessary to maintain the integrity of a 162 game schedule and play the game the way the team was assembled to play it.

The Secret To Winning ILP Games

Get the pitcher out. The pitcher. The automatic out batting ninth. 

In both games at Denver, the game-winning RBI -- the ribbie that gave the hitter's team a lead it never surrendered -- belonged to the Rockies' pitcher. A bases-loaded walk to Jason Hammel on Friday, and tonight a two-run single by Ubaldo Jiminez, batting average going in .000, doughnut hole for 16, on the first pitch Phil Coke threw him, 2-0 Rox in the second. 

Tonight's game, like last night's, thus took early shape and form. It became the kind of night when you expect Ryan Strikeout to actually do something positive. And he did, doubling in two in the sixth to reduce the deficit to 4-3. 

But it was the big loveable teddy bear, Miguel Cabrera, The Big Man -- the Pretenders' equivalent of Clarence Clemons -- who flied out with the tying run on second to end the game.

Broncos 13, Lions 6 / The DH Conundrum

Compilers of Strat-O-Matic oddities will have this one to watch for in next year's game:

Alex Avila, thirdbase-4, e48. The game's lowest ratings for fielding and range; assigned per SOM rules to players who must, due to injury or substitution, play an unfamiliar position that's not on their cards.

American League teams lose the DH when they play in National League parks. Jim Leyland, to keep Avila's bat in the lineup, felt the risk of starting him at third was worth it. 

The ball found Avila soon enough; in the third inning. His throwing error allowed Seth Smith, who had tripled, to score. 

But the score was already 6-1, Rick Porcello was getting hammered, and the misplay had no effect on the outcome.

At the end of four quarters: two field goals for the Lions, one coming on Jhonny Peralta's grand slam, to two TDs and one missed extra point for the Broncos. 

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When American League teams play interleague games on the road, they lose their DH, their pitchers have to bat, and the other team's pitchers have been hitting all season. 

When National League teams play on the road, they get to add an extra bat to their lineup.  

Despite being at a rules disadvantage, American League teams started 2011 with 161 more wins than National League teams in interleague play. 

Offices of the League presidents were abolished a long time ago. Umpires now work games in both leagues. Same strike zone in each. At least on paper. But the egalitarian efforts of Commissioner Allan H. "Bud" Selig to homogenize the MLB product as if it was fast food go out the window when the DH is considered.

One league has it, the other doesn't. Rather than standardize the thing -- make one give it up or the other adopt it -- interleague play got the okay despite the rules inequality that favored the non-DH league over the league that used it. 

American League pitching stats must be viewed in the context of having a hitter in the ninth spot where, in the National League, there's usually an automatic out. With no need to hit for the pitcher, strategy is de-emphasized in the American League. Players who play many positions, and can hit, are more valuable in the National League as halves of double-switches. One-dimensional players ("pure hitters"), and veterans whose fielding skills have faded, find a haven in the American League. 

I always liked the differences. A standardized world can become boring, even though the Wendy's double combo you order in California tastes the same as the one consumed back in Michigan. No small miracle, that. How IS it possible?  

But I thought, in Chancellor Selig's baseball New World Order, the game wasn't a la carte, and no variations were allowed.

6-2 Win, Back In First

Ryan Raburn followed Jhonny Peralta's fourth inning homer with one of his own.

That's nice.

It makes up for the run he let score in the first, when he airmailed a relay throw past third, allowing Michael Brantley, who had tripled, to go on in.

Ryan Homer giveth, Ryan Scatterarm taketh away.

Tomorrow night: interleague play, the Rox in Denver, no DH. Alex Avila will play at least the first game at third, the extended absence of Brandon Hinge opening a spot for him.

In each game of the Indians series, the Tribe radio announcers felt it necessary to rhetorically ask the listeners when they'd last heard of a baseball player going on the DL with mono.

Wild Pitch Wine

Brad Penny didn't have it tonight and, after allowing four singles, one walk, and uncorking a wild pitch in the fourth inning, out he came.

That's how important the Indians series is, even at this somewhat early point in the season, with the Tigers and Indians tied for the top spot and neither able to shake the other to take control of the division race.

The Tribe reclaimed first by a game with a 6-4 win.

There should be a brand of wine named Wild Pitch. It has a ready-made advertising slogan. Cut to ad; soft music playing, candlelight, man and woman -- presumably both baseball fans -- gaze lovingly into each other's eyes, voice-over announcer speaks: "Increase your chances of scoring ... uncork a Wild Pitch .."

Verlander Almost Did It Again

About the fourth inning, that buzz started circulating through Comerica, and through the second floor aseball bunker. No hits for the Indians; Tribe batsmen helpless, doing as well as the guy trying to eat soup with a fork.


I rolled a tape, like I did in the fourth inning on May 7.


JV seemed to be getting stronger as the game progressed, as he did in that Jays no-hitter. Swingo-misso, poppit-uppo, a zero under H for the opposition on the screboard.


Orlando Cabrera singled with one out in the eighth, and that was that. Carlos Santana's ninth inning single was the only other Tribe hit. JV went the distance, striking out ten as the Tigers won 4-0 to move one game ahead of the scuffling Indians in the AL Central standings.


Verlander games have become events. As Denny McLain starts were in his 31 win season of 1968, the year we'd read in the paper that Bob Gibson was starting that night, and listen through fading and static to hear if he'd shut them out again.


You expect him to take a no-hitter late into the game. With a couple breaks and some admittedly out of this world magic, he'd have three this season. Tonight, the Jays game, and that start after that in which he pitched six hitless innings.

This game really whipped the llama's ass. So effectively that Ryan Strikeout striking out in the third with the bases loadad is barely worth mentioning,

RAMON SANTIAGO !!!

One out, bottom tenth, score tied at one, and he smacked one to deep right-center. Victor Martinez chugged all the way home. THAAAA Tigers ... WIN!

The virtual tie for first is thus maintained, with the makeup game win over T-Bay bookending the Indians' 1-0 win in New York.

Derek Jeter is six hits away from 3000, and fear #1 in NYC is that the magic moment will arrive after the current home stand ends, when the Yankees play the Cubs in Chicago this weekend.

If he's still short on Thursday, the series should be moved to Yankee Stadium. Derek Jeter is baseball, baseball is Derek Jeter, the Yankees are the only team that matters, and they didn't spend $2 billion on that stadium to have something like this happen on the road.

Miguel Olivo's Performance

Olivo's performance? What do you mean, what's my opinion of his performance? He beat us with two bleepin' home runs, that's what I think of his performance ... he's hit four bleepin' home runs off us this season. The Seattle bleepin' Mariners are next to last in the major leagues in hitting, they can't hit their bleepin' way out of a wet paper bag, and they beat us 7 to 3 thanks to his two bleepin' home runs ... what do I think of his performance?  You asked me a question and I gave you an answer, but I didn't give you a good answer because I'm mad. How can you ask me a question like that ...? Bleep!

The Virtually Tied For First Detroit Tigers

That they are, after tonight's 8-1 win at Comerica following the Indians' 4-0 loss this afternoon at Yankee Stadium. They're one percentage point out, 35-29 to the Tribe's 34-28.

This miracle has been achieved by the once-flawless Indians losing 13 of their last 17, and the Tigers playing winning, if not always spectacular, ball over that same time period.

Michael Pineda allowed six runs amd eight hits. Jhonny Peralta homered with V-Mart on. J-Per, nine homers, .312 average, steady in the field, your All-Star shortstop, vote early and often.

Max Scherzer got back on track after a few rough outings, holding the M's to one run and four hits over seven.

Ryan Strikeout has been benched, and Magglio comes back on Monday.

Ryan Raburn Bobblehead Night

Three for three -- all strikeouts -- and Ramon Santiago hit for him in the ninth with the tying and winning runs on base.

He's pressing, says the skipper.

Well, yeah ... you can't play baseball in baggy pants!

The Good And Bad Of It

The way Justin Verlander was pitching, you have to wonder how the M's managed to score the one run they did.

It was the most manufactured of runs: single, steal of second, fly ball / move to third, strikeout / wild pitch.

JV's night: eight innings, five hits, the one run, ten whiffos.

Alex Avila tripled twice. Two other Tiger catchers have done that in a single game: Brad Ausmus in 1999, and Lance Parrish in 1980. Ausmus was fast and stole the occasional base, like Avila, your 2011 All-Star catcher (vote early and often). Parrish just hit the ball hard.

Brennan Bash hit his eighth homer, and third this week, with Don Kelly on base.

But let's examine the box score to see what Ryan Strikeout did.

Third inning, foul popup with Avila leadoff triple on base. Fifth: swinging strikeout with Avila on third after triple #2, none out. Seventh: grounded into double play. The boos grew lounder after each failed at bat.

The baseball fan isn't letting up until that #25 belongs to someone else. Like maybe when Magglio comes back next week?

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12:28 AM and the Yankees and Red Sox are only in the sixth inning, after a three hour rain delay.

Since it's a weeknight (school and work tomorrow) and so many fans came to the Stadium only to leave unrewarded, the Yankees are exchanging ticket stubs for future games as if tonight's now-official game had been rained out. They also let fans who left, and waited out the rain in their cars, to come back in. Customarily, that isn't allowed. No re-entry.

That's Yankee class. Don't expect the Dodgers to try something like that anytime soon.

But it still doesn't get them off the Carrie Jacobs-Bond must-lose list.

Jim Northrup Has Died

In the fourth inning of tonight's game (they lost 7-3 in Arlington), Jim Price told the radio audience that former Tigers outfielder Jim Northrup had died earlier in the day, at age 71.

The '68 world champs were my Boys Of Summer. They had four starting outfielders. When the season began, Northrup shared center field with Mickey Stanley. The one who didn't start usually entered the game as a defensive replacement; Stanley for Northrup, and Jim for Willie Horton in left.

Al Kaline broke a finger in June, and Northrup became the regular right fielder.

Kaline was still out on June 24, when Northrup hit two grand slams in a 14-3 win over the Indians in Cleveland, before only 12,808 fans at cavernous Municipal Stadium.

The box score reveals much more to the knowing eye.

Jim Price started behind the plate, went 2 for 4, scored three runs, and homered. One can safely guess that it was his best game in the major leagues. Willie Smith started at first for the Indians, and pitched the last three innings. He broke in as a pitcher with the Tigers, and was the only Tribe hurler who didn't allow any runs.

In the Year of the Pitcher, five Tigers were hitting under .200. Northrup started the day at .225. "Northrup's Slump Over: Two Grand Slams Power 14-3 Win," read the headline over Doug Mintline's game story in the next day's Flint Journal.

Other names jump out of the box score agate: R&B singer Lee Maye. Duke Sims from the 1972 Tigers' division champs. "Ball Four" hero Tommy Harper. Ray Oyler and Wayne Comer, also inhabitants of Jim Bouton's diary, both gone to that big ball park in the sky.

I heard that game, on WJR, with Ernie and Ray Lane mikeside. Generations of fans raised on cable TV may find it hard to picture a time when teams didn't televise every game, when radio was the vital link to that six-month marathon that is a baseball season.

It's hard to imagine anyone who played that night being 71. I'll be 58 next week, and that's hard enough to deal with.

Flint Little League awards night that summer was at the long-gone IMA Auditorium. Trophies and patches were distributed, and three Tigers -- Northrup, Stanley, and Earl Wilson -- were there. When the festivities began, we didn't know we'd get to actually meet our heroes, shake their hands, and wish them luck over the rest of the season.

That was a kick, all right. Meet three guys whose diamond exploits we heard described on the radio every night? Cedar Point could wait.

To hear that one of the three, another of my Boys Of Summer, has passed, leaves a void that I knew would eventually come. That still doesn't diminish its effect.

And The Hits Just Keep On Comin'

After last night's eighteen hit whacking of the Rangers, twenty tonight. Two doubles and a single for Casper The Friendly Outfielder. Two singles for B-Bash. Three for five nights by V-Mart and Alex Avila (your all-star catcher; vote early and vote often).

Even Ryan Strikeout got in on the fun, with two singles and two ribbies. Ladies and gentlemen, the beat goes on.

Rick Porcello kept the Rangers out of the hit parade with another fine outing; six innings, six hits, one run.

Bash's Night, Furbush's Hold

6-3-5-5, reads the box score line that follows Brennan Boesch's name. Five hits, five RBIs, three runs.

Look below, in the extra base hits, and you'll find two homers; one with two on in the first, and a solo shot in the third. And a ribbie double in the sixth. His extra-base outburst powered the Tigers to an early 9-5 lead.

But the result may not have been W without Charlie Furbush's contribution.

When the Rangers looked like they wanted to get back in the game, he blanked them in the sixth and seventh. Nelson Cruz homered with one on in the eighth, but no damage was done and the Tigers prevailed 13-7.

Two runs in three innings drives the young southpaw's ERA all the way up to 1.84. Turned 25 on April 11, and haa added his name to the list -- with the Mets' Dillon Gee, the Braves' Craig Kimbrel, and the Royals' Aaron Crow -- of top rookie hurlers born in 1986.

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Across the lake in Cleveland, the Indians may be hearing footprints.

They've dropped 10 of 13, including tonight's 6-4 loss to the Twins, who haven't lost since they left Detroit. And have been playing an uninspired brand of ball over that time. Their once fat lead is down to 2.5 games.

Don't Let It Go To Your Head

Ryan Strikeout hit a grand slam in this afternoon's fourth inning.

This baseball miracle couldnt have happened without M-Cab's bases-loading 13 pitch walk earlier in the inning.

The effort seemed to drain the life from Jake Peavey's left arm. V-Mart's sac fly brought in Don Kelly. Andy Dirks doubled in B-Bash. Alex Avila walked, and -- mirable dictu -- RS delivered his sacks-clearing blow.

The four runs representing just the start on erasing the difference between the number he's produced and the number let in with his glove, and left on base while waving at strike three.

He's off the Interstate, but hitting a not-so-lusty .201, the season is only one-third over and, when Magglio Ordonez comes off the DL next week, someone has to go.

Verlander Cy Young, Cabrera MVP

Every time one or both does something good, the drumbeat starts again, on the air and in the fan forums.

Like tonight at US Cellular, where JV allowed two runs in eight innings and fanned seven, and where M-Cab homered in the eightth with B-Bash on to provide the margin of victory in a 4-2 win.

It will be up to the voting members of the Baseball Writers' Association of America to decide whether either award shoukl go to someone on a fourth place team.

Back To Mono

Never mind another 6-4 loss, in which Andy Oliver pitched like the rookie he is, in which numerous scoring opportunities were squandered, each liner the found a White Sox glove being the proverbial inch from falling in.

Brandon Hinge has gone on the DL with mononucleosis. The kissing disease! Orally transmitted, highly contagious.

The starting lineup can bear the loss of a .211 hitter. Danny Worth gets to play.

The sensitive nature of a non-injury medical condition means no one can talk about it.

But the first thing I asked myself was: who's he been kissing?

It can't be Derek Jeter. They haven't played the Yankees in over a month.

Feelings, One Year Later

One year to the evening, that is, after Armando Galarraga's imperfect game.


The night when Armando retired the first 26 Indians in order, and then got Jason Donald to hit a grounder to Cabrera, who threw to the pitcher covering in plenty of time for the 27th out. First base umperor Jim Joyce called Donald safe.


After the game and into the next day, players, umps, Dave Dombrowski and Jim Leyland, and the media sob sisters, talked, and wrote, about their feelings, and cried and hugged so much that the whole scene reminded me of the Ricki Lake show. 


Give me a break. 


It was obvious to sixty-odd players and coaches, 17,000 fans at the game, and everyone watching on TV -- everyone, in fact, except they guy who was closest to the play -- that Donald was out. 


The baseball fan wonders how certain pitchers, and manages, from the recent past would have reacted if the umps took a perfect game away from them. Don Drysdale, Billy Martin, where ARE you when we need you? 


Everyone makes mistakes, Leyland admitted during the postgame cry. (Great. Go out to argue a play after that, and see how far you get.) 


There were so many bad calls in Tiger games, that went against the Tigers, in just the rest of June that, finally, the skipper had to get himself run, if only to tell the world enough was enough (on the 29th, in Atlanta, arguing balls that Ray Charles would have ruled strikes). 


Last weekend, the Twins lost a game when four umperors reversed a call, and backpedaled faster and better than Richard Nixon ever did. They couldn't throw Ron Gardenhire out fast enough. After the game, feelings weren't discussed, and no hugs were exchanged. 


Baseball isn't a game played by two teams of nine young girls, officiated by four middle-aged women, whose objective is for one team, after nine innings, to accumulate more feelings than the other.

Not even in San Francisco, where manager Bruce Bochy and GM Brian Sabean need to be measured for evening gowns after whining about the loss of catcher Buster Posey for the season on a collision at the plate, in a play that everyone outside SF has called part of the game.

Top 12th, score tied, you have to score the run. Scott Cousins did. A young girl would have asked permission, let herself get tagged out rather than hurt the catcher, and after that complained that the game dragged on so long.

Schadenfreude

Noun, loanword from German; pleasure derived from the misfortune of others. 


Miss Fortune has been the Twins' companion all season. 


In tonight's seventh inning, they did kick up their heels and looked like they'd become the old Fighting Ferrets,  ready to piranha out a come from behind win. 


Drew Butera, owner of a .133 batting average, hit a two-run homer off Rick Porcello. Then, a typical Ferret rally: bunt single, hit by pitch, walk. But Al the Amazing, issuer of the free pass, struck out Trevor Plouffe to end the inning and keep the score at 4-2 Tigers. 


Plouffe went pooffe, and therein lies the Twins' woes: guys no one's ever heard of, a collection of relief pitchers assembled via the Patch And Pray method, on the spot with the game on the line. They're 12-9 when leading after seven, and 17-37 overall. Twenty games under .500, one-third through the season. 


After years of wins accomplished ferret style, with bottle caps, leftover pieces of wire, and bits of twine -- all of them, it seems, against the Tigers -- including and especially game 163 of 2009, let us not feel sorry for the Minnesota Twins. Let us, in fact, celebrate every visit by Miss Fortune to the Twins' side of the box score.