Lies, Loyalties, and a Mountain

Colorado 0, Dodgers 2

A pitcher’s duel is a game that is tough to appreciate for the average sports watcher. It is a game of defense and subtlety, one seldom marred by the sort of explosive offensive displays that have become synonymous with the modern era of baseball. A pitcher’s duel relies on the chess-like mental fencing that goes on between the catcher and the batter, the pitcher and the catcher, the manager and his hitter, and the big man behind home plate who ultimately will decide if the margin of inches that separates a strike from a ball goes for or against any given player involved. A pitcher’s duel is as stunning as a waterfall delivering a haphazard swimmer to its maker; the threads of water so thin you can see through them, thin like those the pitcher hangs from while fighting the tide of pain and mental fatigue that is measured only, and inadequately, by the last eight innings.

I will never forget the waterfalls of New Zealand, shooting off the side of a cliff, and me standing at the top of them looking down into the cloud cover as they disappear before they hit the ocean below. The sound of the rushing water was the only reminder that I did not stand on the very clouds of heaven itself. I will never forget today, but it’s mostly because of what I didn’t see. Dallas Braden of the Oakland A’s, the town I just moved away from, threw a perfect game up north. The saddest part is that the media have been goaded into talking about Alex Rodriguez in the same article as Braden’s perfect game, and A-Rod wasn’t even involved in the game, A-Rod wasn’t even on the same coast as Braden when his moment of glory occurred. The Braden A-Rod conflict is about as lopsided as the Alamo, and now I will put my foot in my mouth for throwing the first stone.

Clayton Kershaw was coming off of his worst pitching performance in the big leagues, and when my companions and I were headed towards our seats for the first time we all felt a sense of stifled dread, not wanting to admit the almost certain defeat. We were, after all, facing the best pitcher in baseball today, and what’s more is that even after today everyone in the league would probably still peg him as the best. Jimenez did pitch well, despite having lost. Perhaps that is an understatement, Jimenez pitched nearly flawlessly…nearly. The terrible truths of the world that every young child has to experience are these: bedtime is not negotiable, and sometimes your best isn’t good enough. There are probably some other things that go on that list too but I don’t give a damn right now, we’re talking baseball. Jimenez gave his best and we were all just about as riveted to the game when he was pitching as when Kershaw was, but in our hearts we wanted the twenty-two year old Dodger to redeem himself, we were not disappointed.

Still, the Lakers have dominated my mind for the last week, the seemingly endless spiral that both LA baseball teams found themselves in had not yet ended and basketball provided a fitting diversion from the depression of two basement ball clubs. Kobe continues to put up thirty plus point games in the post season, and if the Lakers go all the way he will undoubtedly capture the MVP mantle of the playoffs, and the finals. It is hard to picture a finals without the Cavaliers and LeBron James though, and it is equally hard to picture a finals trophy being hoisted by anyone but James as he sits atop the shoulders of Shaq.

Shaquille Rashaun O’Neal is currently the oldest active player in basketball at thirty-eight, not a number he’s quick to flaunt. Perhaps he’d rather give you the total he was paid in 2005, the year he made over twenty-seven and a half million dollars and was the NBA’s highest paid athlete. Of course now he’s trimmed the fat of his contract down to twenty million in hopes of making room for the player that will give he and James the power to take the NBA title this year. Here we are getting off subject though, the important part is that the only Laker who has more than a chance in hell of guarding him is Bynum, who’s right knee is already trying to deal with torn cartilage, and doesn’t need another three hundred and twenty-five odd pounds of man flailing all around it.

The Lakers, and all NBA fans will get their final word when the championship is played, and I’m sure I’ll be there to shout obsenities at the referee and curse anyone standing in my teams way. For now though, we will have to be happy with the small success’s we have. The Angels and the Dodgers are both in the valley after rolling down a long hill and now they are looking up at the next mountain and saying, “Hey! I can make it up that.”

p.s. If you would like to receive e-mail notifications from yours truly every time this blog is updated then please e-mail adamsolomon1@gmail.com and put "Dodging Angels and Finding Angles" in the subject line, thanks!

History is doomed to repeat itself

Milwaukee 11, Dodgers 6

…and what’s amazing about that score is that it doesn’t even begin to tell the whole story. As scores often do, they inform quickly and mostly inadequately. If they were the only important statistic then we’d not have a multi billion-dollar T.V. contract for Major League Baseball and revenue for the league in excess of six billion dollars last year. Still, it doesn’t make every game fun to watch, and this one is proof.

It was somewhere around the third inning that I gave up all hope of having a truly engrossing ball game to watch, when the Dodgers had a light single into right field and Narveson had what was until then a perfect game spoiled. Down 9-0 at that point I was ready to find a large soda and some ice cream to drown my sorrows in since I was the designated driver. I was astonished by how at the beginning of every inning the players faithfully donned their caps and gloves to field and bat in this game whose end was wholly over and hardly in doubt. Of course, the Dodgers combined team salary of 96 and some odd million is probably a big part of why they’re still chipper after an embarrassing showing by Kershaw, their starting pitcher. He walked one batter, hit two more and then gave up two home runs, and all in the second inning. I will leave it there so that we don’t have to usher the women and children out of the room before continuing to read the article.

Somewhere in the eighth inning Loney hit a home run to give the Dodgers their fifth and sixth runs and the drunken dad in front of me stood up sloshing his beer on the seats and the aisle shouting we’re not done yet. My grandfather slapped him a high five and with an obvious tint of sarcasm shouted, “Yeah! We’ve really got Milwaukee on the run now.” The game was over, but everybody loves home runs.

What I can say with unequivocal certainty is that the odds of this game turning out the way it did and me being there under these circumstances were even less than the chances of a Dodger come back in the bottom of the ninth with two outs as Garret Anderson took up his first at bat in the game as a pinch hitter. When I was thirteen my grandpa took me to a Dodger game, and my middling teen aged body was more awkward than a dirty joke in a nunnery. Still, we went and saw something that will probably never happen again in my lifetime; Fernando Tatis hit two grand slams off of Chan Ho Park in the third inning. What sort of sadistic manager would let a pitcher sit through the entire line up again after one grand slam is beyond me, someone who’s into some real dark stuff at least? We’re getting off topic here, the important part is that that was the last time anyone scored nine or more runs in an inning against the Dodgers, shoot, that was probably the last time anyone scored nine runs in an inning in Dodger stadium at all, and eleven years ago me and my grandpa were there to see it.

On the drive home we tuned in to the last minutes of the Lakers game and all I can say about that is at least L.A. has one team that’s not a loser tonight.