Least Valuable Player

The same kind of timely hit that would have won a game or three in Kansas City won one at Comerica. 

In tonight's seventh inning, with the score even at four, Delmon Young hit a bases-clearing double of White Sox starter Jake Peavey. 

Benoit and Valverde, both experiencing Terry McMillan Effect -- gotten their grooves back -- blanked the Sox to preserve a 7-4 win.

At the All Star break Jayson Stark, who comments about baseball for ESPN and who knows a lot more about baseball than I do despite being half my age, declared Delmon Young the America League's first-half Least Valuable Player. 

In August, the AL LVP hit .304 with three homers and 14 RBIs, not counting the homer and two RBIs he lost to the umperors in KC. If he hadn't done You Know What in New York, he might get a few votes for AL Player of the Month for August. 

Yet the sniping continues, because of You Know What, in sports section reader forums. 

So what's say y'all just back off him and let him play ball, okay? 

He can walk after this season, but I'd bring him back. 

Maggie Speaks

Good morning. This is Maggie, Tom's friend. He said I could write the blog post today, since the Tigers played like they were asleep (they lost 3-2) and couldn't wait to get on the plane and go back home. 

I didn't see the game. So I will give you our favorite recipe for fish and chips. 

We really don't have a recipe. We pour a little cooking oil in an aluminum pan, and coat the fish with McCormick's Fish And Chips batter mix straight from the box. We don't use water. We cook them at 350, about ten minutes each side. They taste great. They taste like fish, not like the ingredients. 

For chips, we use baking potatoes and cook them in bacon grease that we save from breakfast. Sprinkle on a little salt and pepper, serve them hot with fish, and you can't have a better dinner. 

Tom always helps cook dinner, and clean up afterwards. I think men who like to help out in the kitchen are extremely sexy. 

Thank you for reading my recipe, and I hope the Tigers play better tomorrow night.

Yig Tibbikim

Anibal Sanchez showed the baseball world why the Tigers traded for him. Seven innings, seven hits one run, zero walks. Good enough to win on any other night. 

But they should have also traded for some strapping lad, preferably one who hits right-handed, who could supply a timely hit or three, and knock one into the fountains now and then. 

Bruch Chen blanked the Pretenderso n four hits over eight innings.Greg Holland permitted two hits, but no runs, in the ninth when a timely hit would have meant the difference between triumph and embarrassment. 

You've got to be kidding me. 

YGTBKM has become Price and Dickerson's favorite phrase to drop into the radio description of yet another play, or series of events, that costs the Pretenders a winnable game.. They used it a few times during yesterday's 9-8 disaster, and got it out again tonight.You could make a word out of it. Better, two words. Yig tibbikim.

The game's only run scored on a soft grounder by Eric Hosmer, soft s bread fresh from the oven. Yig tibbikim.

The Game That Got Away

What a night for Delmon Young! Two home runs, five RBIs including a two-run shot that gave the Tigers an 11-9 lead in the ninth.

But the final was 9-8 Royals, you say, having either watched the game or checked MLB for updates. 

That's because the umperors, after reviewing video, called the ball foul. Umperors 1, Pretenders 0. 

The phantom homer wouldn't have mattered, of course, had the P's been able to take care of business earlier.

Ten of the first sixteen Royals hit safely off Justin Verlander. The eight runs he allowed, in 5.2 innings, equal the most he's ever given up in one game.

But the P's peckitty-pecked their way back to an 8-8 tie.

In the eighth, Phil Coke, brought in to get a left-handed hitter (Mike Moustakis) out, gave up a double that put KC up by one. 

3.72 doesn't look bad, but 65 hits in 48 innings is not acceptable for a situational lefty. And 48 innings means he's had the opportunities.In the last twelve, he's given up at least one hit.

The White Sox? They lost, 6-0 in Baltimore. 

Come Sunday September 30, once the Orioles and Athletics have clinched the wild cards, and the Sox the Central, this one will be The Game That Got Away.

Help From Our Friends, I Think

Orioles 4, White Sox 3 at Camden Yards. So we gain a half game on the Pale Hose, but lose a half game in the Bridesmaid standings to Los Birdos. 

Attendance for this game between the first place Sox and the serious post-season talking Orioles, on their way to their first winning season since 1997: 10, 995. 

Baltimore used to be a great baseball town. 

When the Tigers play there, it's hard to tell via the radio who's the home team, since so many people from Michigan show up to cheer for the enemy.

Bleepin Day Baseball !!!

Eighty five percent of the world's workin! The other fifteen's out at the bleepin beach listenin to the game on the radio! It's a playground for the bleep-bleepers -- 

Uhh . . . but it's Sunday . . . ? 

Well . . . that's no excuse. It's still a tough American League Central. (It's a tough American League, period.) 

Indeed it is, and that makes having Scherzer and Verlander atop the rotation reassuring. 

Scherzer starts have become Verlander-like. You'd better watch, because amazing things usually happen. 

And amazing Max was this hot Sunday at Comerica, allowing one run and four hits through seven, while striking out nine Seraphim. The outing dropped his ERA to 4.13, and a few more like it will keep him from the dubious distinction of striking out eleven per nine innings with an ERA over four.

The win was his 14th. Nine strikeouts give him 195 -- three more than Verlander -- and first place among all starting pitchers.

Prince Fielder and Delmon Young homered back-to-back in the sixth off Johan Santana, into the same wind that kept kites aloft at the beach. Final: Tigers 5, Seraphs 1; and this portion of the make-hay-while-the-wind-blows home stand thus ends with six wins and three losses. Enormously better than expected, after it began with two of three dropped to the Orioles.

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Seraph, plural seraphim, noun, a type of celestial creature first mentioned in the Old Testament. In Christianity, they are the highest order of angels.

When Your Blogger was a lad and the Los Angeles Angels were a new expansion team, sports writers routinely called them "Seraphs." Like they do "Halos" now. I thought Seraph was a word for people from California. Like "Yankee" for New Englanders, or"Yooper"  for anyone who lived north of the Mackinac Bridge.

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And, after venturing into theology and the etymology of English, one naturally starts to wonder what Lee Elia is doing. 

Google search him and most of what you find is about The Rant. A baseball lifer, and what he's most known for happened off the field. Little is mentioned about, at age 73 in 2011, his appointment as a spring hitting coach with the Braves, and a special assistant to GM Frank Wren. 

Ungrateful For Small Miracles

The Pretenders committed three errors in the first five innings, that led to two unearned runs and an early 3-0 Angel lead. 

Baseball's 20th best defense has allowed 61 unearned runs. By comparison, the two worst fielding teams, the Rockies and Orioles, have allowed  53 and 54, respectively. Saving them so far has been the pitchers' knack for piling up strikeouts (they're fifth out of 30 teams). The fewer chances the fielders get to touch the ball, the better. 

It is thus with small satisfaction that Your Baseball Blogger mentions the fifth inning RBI knocks, a Young double and Dirks single, the eighth inning three-run miracle highlighted by Peralta's two-run double, and Drew Smyly's nice effort (six innings, four hits, one earned run) in place of the tweaked Doug Fister.

Small satisfaction also for all five gifts from Heaven coming with two out. 

Because kicking it around is going to cost them, in some game they'll really need to have a shot at that one game play-in.