Judy's Turn To Cry

Indians' reliever Frank Hermann gave up Bret Morel's second homer of the night, a three run shot in the seventh that widened the White Sox lead to 4-1. A walk, single and hit batter later, Josh Judy served up a grand slam to Paul Konerko. 8-1 Sox, game over.

Josh Judy is one of those rare players who has two first names, both starting with the same letter and having the same number of letters.  He's among a passel of players the Indians have shuttled between Cleveland and Columbus over the last several seasons, who we've come to like here in the second floor baseball bunker.Where we've rooted for the Indians, except when they played the Tigers and when they got too far ahead of the Tigers in the standings.

It hurts us when they get whacked; especially by the White Sox. Uniforms, ball park and its location, players, manager, fans, radio announcers; amng them there is precious little to like. If Osama bin Laden had been a baseball fan, he'd have been a White Sox fan. 

After the Tigers sweep, with the Tribe ten games out and one under .500 at 70-71, Tom Hamilton and Jim Rosenhaus are talking about next year. 

They weren't expected to do anything this year, but led for most of the first half and stayed in contention until September with a lot of key players on the DL. If they do limp home with a losing record, has it been a failed season? Of course not.

September Song

The days grow short when you reach September. And they dwindle down to a precious few for teams fighting to stay in their respective division races.

The Indians, barring a complete and total Tiger collapse, may have run out of days.

In game one of a series they had to sweep to have any serious thoughts of post-season, Doug Fister silenced their bats. 

Fister pitched the best game of his career, holding the Tribe to two runs and four hits through eight innings while striking out 13.

Ubaldo Jiminez also pitched well -- three runs and two hits in seven innings -- but made one mistake, that Victor Martinez hit for a three run homer in the fourth.

The win puts the Indians 7 1-2 out with 24 to play, and a ten game road trip to Chicago, Texas, and Minnesota coming up once the Tigers series is over.

Whole Lot Of Shaking Going On

Around quarter to 2 this afternoon, the day half of the Indians makeup doubleheader with the Mariners under way, and Tom Hamilton and Mike Hegan, on Indians' radio, felt the Progressive Field press level shake. For several minutes, they said.

I was outside and didn't feel a thing. Their descriptions, however, reminded of the Michigan earthquake I did feel, in the upper bleachers at Tiger Stadium one Sunday afternoon.

Only an earthquake and a Cecil Fielder home run can make a ball park shake, and Cecil's long retired. So it had to be a quake. And there was one today, centered in Virginia and felt all along the east coast.

A little old lady on the ninth floor of a local seniors' high-rise said her china rattled and pictures on the wall shook. I didn't see anything out of place, and returned my attention to where it belonged: the ball game.

The M's got two in their ninth to take a 5-4 lead. Then followed an Ezequiel Cabrera double, a Dustin Ackley error, and a three-run walkoff homer by Shin-Soo Choo. Which could send shock waves through your world, I'm sure, if you're among the handful who still cares about what happens to the Seattle Mariners.

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Your picture came off the wall, Maggie informed me on my return home.

The only framed pic that's "mine" is the one of baseball's Commissioner, that I tore out of a magazine and autographed to myself:"Dear Tom -- four wild card teams sounds just great -- affectionately, Allan H. 'Bud' Selig."

Now the glass is cracked. And none of the other pictures fell.

Hmmmm ...

I called the newspaper while you were gone, she added. In my scared little old lady voice. Told them that plates rattled, and the sky was falling.

Good for you, I said. Anarchist. What's for dinner?

Oh, no cooking .... can we go out tonight? I know it isn't Sunday. Pleeeeese? 

So dinner out it was,with just enough time to get back home for the Tigers game. My queen being all worn out from a day of mischief at home alone to take out the cook book.

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Tonight at Tropicana Field, Brad Penny allowed eight hits but only one run in six-plus innings. He stayed in long enough to benefit from two seventh inning Tiger runs, and posted his ninth win.

The D-Rays helped by stranding twelve runners.

Phil Coke pitched a scoreless eighth and ninth to earn his first save of 2011.

A Tigers win and Indians doubleheader split gives the Tigers a six game lead. Last Thursday it was 1 1-2 with the Tribe, who'd just taken two of three from the White Sox, on their way to Comerica.

If not for the Choo walkoff homer today, they'd have a six game losing streak.

Choo, Michael Brantley, Travis Hafner, and star rookie Jason Kipnis have joined Grady Sizemore on the DL. Minus key men for most of the season, the Indians have hung in there but now show signs of running down, like the pink bunny whose batteries have drained.

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Before the Indians were the other home team, there were the Blue Jays. Their games could be had on radio from day one in southeast Michigan, where Tom Cheek and Jerry Howarth became our alternate Voices Of Summer. They won pennants in 1992 and 1993, and were in contention in many seasons when the Tigers were buried by June.

Two Blue Jays who've become old friends in the second floor baseball bunker via those games on radio, Aaron Hill and John MacDonald, were traded today, to the D-Backs for Kelly Johnson.

All three are middle infielders, and all become free agents after this season. So they could all end up back where they started after six weeks of rental status.

Johnny Mac played 31 games for the 2005 Tigers. He's never played more than 123 games in a season, but has always been one of those useful guys a winning team can't be without.

That the Tigers sent him back to Toronto might, in its own small way, explain why, after 2006, they had trouble becoming a winning team.

Scherzer Beats Indians

Max Scherzer allowed one run and five hits in seven innings. At no time this season has a well-pitched game been more needed. 

A loss would have moved the Indians to within a half game of the Tigers and brought Mo Mentum over to their side for the weekend. With the win, they're 2 1-2 out, and Mo wears the Olde English "D." 

Austin Jackson? He's still the man, only for a different reason. His two-run sixth inning homer broke a scoreless tie.

Avila and Peralta, the last two hitters Josh Tomlin faced, homered in the seventh.  Benoit blanked the Tribe in the eighth, Valverde in the ninth, the way they drew it up in Lakeland, and isn't it great when everything falls into place?

Forty four thousand and change squeezed into Comerica. Per the box score, 107 percent of capacity. 

A Tale Of Two Baseball Games

In tonight's third inning, Miguel Cabrera singled in Boesch and Young. Not many teams fall two runs down to Justin Verlander at Comerica and end the game victorious. The Twins wouldn't be among them.

Two-out singles by V-Mart, Avila, and Peralta in the fifth produced three more runs to wrap the game up, nice and neat with a ribbon on the package, 7-1 Tigers. 

At US Cellular, it seemed like the game would never end.  

The White Sox and Indians traded blows like two aging boxers fighting for their careers. After nine, they were tied at seven.

In the 14th, with Tribe starter David Huff on the mound, Juan P. Air singled in Gordon Beckham for the game-winner. The walkoff win was one of five in major league baseball tonight. It moved the Pale Hose one game over .500, and to within one half game of the Indians. More importantly for us Tigers fans: it increased our lead to 3 1-2 games.

Nineteen Indians, and eleven Sox, struck out. The Sox had the winning run in scoring position in the ninth, and in every extra inning. They had 22 hits and stranded 16 runners. 

And the fans ...  as the game was heard here on DX WTAM, the crowd noise became a persistent swirl, louder as the game crawled through extra innings. One wonders what the ball park experience at The Cell might be like, past midnight and in the company of several thousand White Sox fans who'd been drinking Old Style ("pure brewed in God's country") for five hours.

Tigers Win, Tribe Survives

Indians-Rangers in Arlington was scoreless through six. In the seventh, the Indians scored three and allowed four. Asdrubal Cabrera dropped what would have been a inning-ending double play ball. Then, in the eighth, representing the tying run, he got picked off first.

I wanted the Tribe to win and get Cabrera off the hook. But a win wouldn't help the Tigers. They'd already won, 4-3 in KC, Verlander's 16th.

The Indians scored four in the ninth, and held off the Rangers to win 7-5. Which is okay. My other favorite team won, Cabrera didn't wear goat's horns, and one more day has been removed from the schedule with the Tigers losing no ground.

The Curious End Of The Baseball Game In The Night Time

Bottom tenth, two out, score tied at seven, Elvis Andrus on second. Josh Hamilton hits a grounder to short, and beats the throw to first. Only Matt LaPorta knows why he held the ball and ignored Andrus, who never stopped running and scored the game winner.

The Tigers also won in extra frames, in a more conventional way: Brennan Boesch singled in Andy Dirks to give his mates a 4-3 win in ten at KC.

The win and Indians loss in Texas returns the Tiger lead to four, again their widest of the season.

Fister's Debut / The Ellsbury Doughboy

Seven innings, eight hits, three runs to MLB's second-best hitting team, the Texas Rangers. But no walks or strikeouts. 

Ryan Raburn homered in the eighth to make the score 5-3. Good thing he did, because Mike Napoli homered off Fernando Valverde with one out in the ninth. Papa Shut 'Em Down got the next two, and entered save number *30 out of *30 chances in this season's record book.

Raburn is hitting over .350 since the All-Star break; a hot stretch that has him all the way up to .227; a figure that by itself is an indicator of how bad things once were. 

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Indians' rookie second baseman Jason Kipnis as become in instant baseball celebrity. The other famous person with that name, after classical musician Igor Kipnis. 

The Tribe, in a curious trade deadline move, sent veteran infielder Orlando Cabrera to the Giants at a time when contending clubs like to hang onto experienced players. They've installed Kipnis at second and another freshman, Lonnie Chisenhall, at third. 

Tonight at Fenway, Kipnis homered in his fourth straight game. Future MVP and baseball CEO Al Rosen was the last Indian rookie to do that, in 1950.

"The greatest thrill in the world is to end the game with a home run and watch everybody else walk off the field while you're running the bases on air," Rosen once said. 

That's what Jacoby Ellsbury did in the ninth, giving the Red Sox a 4-3 win and  the Tigers a four game lead in the AL Central.

Rooting For The Indians

It's easy, and tempting. 

In the 90s and 00s, when the Tigers were bad and the Indians were good, they were the second home team.The presence on the radio dial of flagship station WTAM, day and night, in the pre-Gameday era, making it easy to track their progress.Herb Score was one of the best, and Tom Hamilton hadn't learned how to scream yet.

Asdrubal Cabrera homered twice tonight at Fenway, and the Tribe won 9-6, narrowing their deficit to two games over the idle Tigers.

Good for him; he's always been one of my favorite players. Nineteen homers this season is more than he'd hit in parts of four major league seasons.

But he might hit one or two against the Tigers, in the twelve games remaining between the two teams, and make the difference between post-season and going home.

Six Run Fifth / Tribe Loses

With two outs and bases empty: single, double, sac fly, homer (Cabrera), double, single, homer (Carlos Guillen). 

All that was needed to put away the Oakland Anonymites.Final: 8-3 Tigers.

Their starting pitchers, except for tonight,  have been great, but the starting nine is a collection of veterans whose day has passed, and young players who've been future stars for too long.

The Hinge Watch: 0 for 4, one strikeout, .177, twelve days until the trading deadline. 

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At Target Field, the Twins got two in the ninth and beat the Indians 2-1, dropping them back into a virtual tie for first with the Tigers.

The Tribe ran out of outfielders and put infielder Luis Valbuena in left. With the bases loaded, Danny Valencia hit a soft fly his way. The video indicates it was catchable, but he let it drop. No one knows why, but the loss is in the books.  

If the Indians lose the division by one game, July 19 could be the night they lost it. 

The Late Scene / Instant Karma

In the top of the sixteenth inning at Tropicana this morning, Dustin Pedroia singled in Josh Reddick to give the Red Sox a 1-0 lead. 

I was there at the end, pondering re how many fans in the range of ESPN Radio Sunday Night Baseball had stayed up until 1:54 AM Eastern time to hear the last out. No one in Lakeport, I'll bet; everyone here being exhausted from a day at the beach or in the company of power tools. Maybe an accidental handful in Port Huron, and a sprinkling closer to Detroit.

They got to hear the very rare and collectible WXYT AM-only legal ID, and a historic game. 

The Red Sox had five hits, and the D-Rays three; the lowest hit total for two teams in a game longer than 13 innings since 1920. Josh Beckett allowed one base runner through eight, Evan Longoria's first inning infield single. Jeff Niemann gave up two hits in his eight innings.Each team's bullpen pitched seven scoreless frames, further establishing 2011 as the new millennium's Year Of The Pitcher

I'm sure it was also the longest Sunday night game in innings (16) and elapsed time (5 hours 44 minutes). I remember only a handful of games lasting past midnight and into Monday morning.

No one likes to play on Sunday night. Most teams avoid scheduling night games on getaway days. The Red Sox were so worn out from the long game and late travel that they managed only 15 runs tonight in Baltimore. 

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The Twins got a taste of Instant Karma this afternoon in Minneapolis.

They lost the makeup game (all players had to wear makeup) of today's day-night doubleheader with the Indians; the rescheduling of a game they pulled the plug on early, in May when they were struggling. The rain stopped that night, and conditions became very playable.

And, just for that, they lost the night game as well. (It's not nice to fool Mother Nature.)

Two Tribe wins give them a one game lead over the idle Pretenders, who begin a three game series with the Athletics tomorrow night at Comerica.

Two Firsts

With one out in the fourth, Phil Coke hurt his ankle covering first, and had to come out. 


Enter top pitching prospect Charlie Furbush, fresh off the freeway from Toledo. 


The big southpaw from South Portland, Maine held the Rays scoreless over three and two-thirds innings, and got the W in his first major league game. Isn't that cool, to read 0.00 in the box score, in the last column of pitching stats following a Tiger hurler's name? Indeed it is. 


And Andy Dirks hit his first major league homer, a solo shot in the fifth. 


In the Tigers' four run eighth, V-Mart and J-Per each drove in two. 


J-Val pitched the ninth, and brought back memories of F-Rod in 2009: two easy outs, then walk, single, single, wild pitch, walk. The game ended only when M-Cab snagged J-Dam's liner. 


Total the letters you don't type by doing that, and in a single post you could save as much as one line of text. 


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At the Prog tonight, two former Tigers made the difference in the Tribe's win over the Red Sox. 


Jack Hannahan singled to lead off the eighth. Madam I'm Adam Everett ran for him. He scored on a Michael Brantley single that tied the game at two. Asdrubal Cabrera -- him again? -- doubled in Brantley. 


But who ended the game by hitting into a double play? Arguably the fastest guy in the American League, Carl Crawford. 


Special things? Yes, every night. It's always something. Across the lake, however, the something is usually good. 

$1.28

Indians' outfielder Travis Buck wears number 28. So, on the back of his uniform shirt, the fan reads BUCK 28. 


You don't want to be hitting a buck twenty-eight in the major leagues, or even in A ball. He's actually hitting .267 in 14 games this season, and back in The Show, replacing Travis Hafner who has gone on the DL.


All Buck 28 did today was hit a two-run homer in the eighth inning to give the Tribe a 2-1 lead over the Reds. A lead they, of course, held onto for their 28th win, most in baseball on this doomsday May 21. If the world does end in a couple hours, they will be the 2011 Central Division champs. 


Everyone is getting in on the fun in Cleveland. Like the 68 Tigers. Dick Tracewski, who was hitting a buck-something at the time, won a game in extra innings with a walkoff hit. When stuff like that happens, you know it's a special season. 

They're Still Not Hitting

In every game, they now have a better than ordinary chance of getting no-hitted. 


Tonight's contest began with fourteen of the quickest, quietest outs you'll ever see. Andy Dirks got the first hit with two out in the fifth. 


At that point, down 1-0 but with Baseball Tracker Radar picking up disaster over the horizon, I turned the game off. Launched Dodgers-White Sox on MLB, and tuned the radio to Indians at Reds. 


I didn't miss anything unexpected. 


It was still pretty much a game (3-1 Pirates) in the sixth, before Bryan Villareal allowed two two-run doubles. 


The cornfield's total of ineffective Tiger middle relievers has increased by one. 


Neal Walker homered with two on in the eighth off Papa Three Run Homer. Final: 10-1 Buccos. 


The world is supposed to end tomorrow, at six in the evening EDT. 


For skipper Leyland and his coaches, the end may come just in time. 


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Should tomorrow really be the end, this year's Indians' heroics will have gone for nothing. 


They were getting no-hitted, by Travis Wood in Cincinnati, but scored four to get even, and got one in the ninth on a bases-loaded drag bunt single by Ezekiel Carrera in his first major league at bat. 


That was pretty cool. What a way to break in. Hit, RBI, game winner on the first pitch you see in The Show. 


If stuff like this keeps happening, this will become an Indians blog. 


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The lack of hitting has produce one positive: Ryan Strikeout is out of the starting lineup, and back on the bench where he belongs. 


Andy Dirks is playing left field. Called up when Magglio Ordonez went on the DL. 


The ankle Maggs hurt last year is still sore. He's 37, coming off an injury, hitting .172 with one RBI ... and you wonder if, and hope it ain't so that, he's played his last game. When he hit .303 last year, and .310 in '09 after a slow start, a certain baseball blogger remarked that Maggs had found the Fountain of Youth, and returned with enough of the precious fluid to last three of four more seasons. The blogger doesn't write stuff like that about just anyone. 

Two Special Games

In his first outing since last week's no-hitter, Justin Verlander held the Royals hitless until two out in the sixth, when Melky Cabrera tripled. He came out after eight, having allowed only a Matt Trainor double. Papa Grande got the save, and you can put it in the win column.

Anyone, a good day, can come up with a no-hitter. What they do next time out reveals a great deal. Francisco Liriano, arguably the least likely pitcher to do that (zero complete games lifetime, 2011 ERA over nine), was chased after four innings, by the Tigers. Tonight, JV kept going out there, throwing like he could do it again. And no one at the game, or watching at home, held any doubt that he would. Verlandermania has taken hold at Comerica!

Across the lake in Cleveland, the Indians got three in the ninth to win; the last two on a walkoff home run by Travis Hafner.The Tribe's fifth walkoff win at the corner of Carnegie and Ontario, where it's all happening. Like it was at Michigan and Trumbull in 1968, when the Tigers, if behind after the seventh inning, had the other team right where they wanted them.

HAHA RED SOX !!!

The Sox and Indians played a Rembrandt of a game this afternoon, before a small gathering at Progressive Field. Jon Lester and Fausto Carmona matched brushstrokes through seven. In the eighth, "Madam I'm Adam" Everett led off with a walk, stole second, was sacrificed to third, and squeezed home by Asdrubal Cabrera for the game's first run. 

The tying run -- pinch runner Darnell McDonald -- took a wide turn around second, fell, and was tagged out to end the game. 

The Carmines head home winless in six road games. A disappointing total for a team expected to go 162 and 0 this season, that takes the shine off this weekend's renewal of The Rivalry played out on the Fox Saturday Red Sox-Yankees Game Of The Week, and ESP Red Sox-Yankees N Sunday night game.