Watching Ray Allen throw up what will certainly be a record, I am struck by nothing else but this… “How good is Kobe?” Knocking down that three, keeping an outplayed team in a game, good job!
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Saturday, June 5, 2010
How best to deal with loss?
Dodgers 3 Tigers 0 (Series)
Perhaps we allow our hopes and dreams to last too long, and with their dissolution we are left lacking. As though we were only an embossment bearing a decal that never arrived or was left out.
This was the figment that shadowed the Arizona Diamondbacks for three days. Each game seemed to have moments of déjà vu, extra innings, last minute heroics, pitching successes and grave errors. I found myself at two of the three games, but after the fourteenth inning marathon finally ended my cabinet of advisors were very satisfied, and who wouldn’t be? Three wins and half a game out of first…at least until the San Diego game is over.
Perhaps a pessimist might look at the coming schedule and say that extra innings and near failures and errors like the one Arizona second baseman Kelly Johnson made to allow two runs to score in the eighth inning are all signs that the Dodgers are in fact finding themselves winded and faltering at the end of a great sprint that has left them looking hungry and mean, and some of them are! But not all of them. In years past Garret Anderson would have just crushed that looping line drive to center field that won game three of the series, Manny Ramirez would be playing the last game of a home stand against a basement team just because he felt like swinging a bat, and Joe Torre would have the presence of mind to know that even if Arizona manager Jim Leyland isn’t going to try the squeeze play he’s better off with Belisario pitching to an eight armed monster that bats left and right at the same time. But these are all conjectures made on imperfect incomplete and horribly inarticulate logic.
The truth could be that in fact Garret Anderson, or any hitter at all might have been lucky to get wood on that fourteenth inning pitch, and Manny is actually nursing a bruised hand after colliding with the wall on that fabulous catch in game two of the series, and Torre may know that Belisario stubbed his toe on his patio in Silverlake the other day and every thrust off the pitchers plate is pure agony, but we’ll never really truly know.
What we do know is that Armando Galarraga has learned something about loss. On the verge of being a big part of baseball history, on the verge of being the third pitcher in a month to pitch a perfect game, something that has never been done in one season much less a single month of baseball, and yet we are left wanting. Jim Joyce feels bad, no doubts there, but do we know what we’ve missed? It’s not as riveting as watching big armed boys beat baseballs out of the park, but it’s something. Perhaps it’s not so vile a thing that the Dodgers had to have two extra-inning games that ended in 1-0 scores two games in a row given the apparent level of pitching expertise. On the other hand all this hub-bub about steroids may actually be paying off and high fly balls may actually be just that, fly balls. Either way, I’m glad to watch it all go down because I’ve certainly learned something about loss.
Would we play the game if it didn't but annex for us at least one microscopic second in the infinitum of that which we will lose more of than any other thing, time?
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Time, death, and misdirection
Tigers 6, Dodgers 2
Sitting there watching the Dodgers flail and gasp for air as Garret Anderson shows the first signs of life we’ve yet gleaned off him this season, I am struck by two powerful themes, time and death.
It was not just the vicious Tigers who battered Hiroki Kuroda through six innings, or the death of former Dodger playoff hero Jose Lima that gave me this ominously excessive revelation, but rather it was a fact. It was a Dodgers pitcher who first won the Cy Young award in 1956, Don Newcombe in fact. And it was given in honor of Cy Young, who had died in November of the previous year. This award honors the best pitcher in baseball, but the best pitcher in baseball’s history up to that time was not at it’s first awarding. Denton True (Cy) Young might have known he was going to get an award named after him, perhaps if he were alive he would have kicked and screamed at the honor, bemoaning the idiot commissioner and all the sports writers who’d one day vote on the pitcher who would carry his name sake off as a trophy. Chances are, he wouldn’t. Chances are that in the wake of Cy Young’s death baseball learned it was loosing a true legend, and it missed him all the more for it. Baseball and the Dodgers have a similar story.
Missing three of the biggest stars on the Dodger roster, Ramirez, Ethier, and Furcal, they already appear to be showing signs of wear and tear that shouldn’t even be thought about before the all star break. Despite this, there are reasons to remain optimistic. Russell Martin has continued to play well, and along with Casey Blake and Matt Kemp there is little doubt that the Dodgers recent success will come back around once they get healthy.
I must admit that watching the Dodgers was a lot more fun when they were winning. The Latino’s sitting in front of us who had rolled two rows deep were shouting and whooping at every rally. Now, with a loss in the cards there’s only a mild mannered collection of upper middle class families who seem to have nothing interesting to say, and worst of all they don’t watch the basketball game on their phones and tell me the score whenever I ask it.
Now the lowly Dodgers slink away with their tails between their legs, even hitting in to a double play to end the game in the bottom of the ninth inning. The only salvageable moment of the game was the perfectly executed suicide squeeze to give the Tigers their fourth run of the game. The ferocity of the Tigers manager Jim Leyland as he switched pinch hitters in order to gain a slight advantage, reminded me what it would be like to be Joe Torre, only he’s my grandpa’s declawed cat because he just switched pitchers to avoid pitching to…another pitcher? If Joe Torre doesn’t feel like a nance for running to the bullpen when a pitcher came up to bat then nobody ever will.
My cabinet of trusted advisors who accompany me to every game had a good laugh after the game in the smoking room about that one, what a joke good ole’ Leyland had played on him, except that in truth it could have very nearly been the game. When Manny Ramirez came up to pinch hit in the sixth inning we were all sure that the Dodgers were about to blow the game wide open. One chance wasn’t enough though and the Dodgers would pester the Tigers until the very last.
Like a fly they were simply swatted away.
How did I get here though, miles from time and death, or am I? If we only remembered the value of those near and dear to us while they were alive then perhaps we would put them to better use. Of course the Angels across town could better themselves if they heeded that counsel every off-season. More than one star has been lost to an administration unappreciative of their services. Still, time and death, the love of life as Jack London put it. If you’ve not partaken in that harrowing story then I advise you to read that, AFTER you’ve finished reading this.
Ethier and Manny Ramirez were sitting on a bench on a Los Angeles front porch. Manny turned his head and glanced over at Ethier and said, “Hey, did you hear they’re building a new stadium in Detroit?”
“No.”
“But they aren’t telling anyone where it is. They’re worried that the Tigers will try and play there.”
Sitting there watching the Dodgers flail and gasp for air as Garret Anderson shows the first signs of life we’ve yet gleaned off him this season, I am struck by two powerful themes, time and death.
It was not just the vicious Tigers who battered Hiroki Kuroda through six innings, or the death of former Dodger playoff hero Jose Lima that gave me this ominously excessive revelation, but rather it was a fact. It was a Dodgers pitcher who first won the Cy Young award in 1956, Don Newcombe in fact. And it was given in honor of Cy Young, who had died in November of the previous year. This award honors the best pitcher in baseball, but the best pitcher in baseball’s history up to that time was not at it’s first awarding. Denton True (Cy) Young might have known he was going to get an award named after him, perhaps if he were alive he would have kicked and screamed at the honor, bemoaning the idiot commissioner and all the sports writers who’d one day vote on the pitcher who would carry his name sake off as a trophy. Chances are, he wouldn’t. Chances are that in the wake of Cy Young’s death baseball learned it was loosing a true legend, and it missed him all the more for it. Baseball and the Dodgers have a similar story.
Missing three of the biggest stars on the Dodger roster, Ramirez, Ethier, and Furcal, they already appear to be showing signs of wear and tear that shouldn’t even be thought about before the all star break. Despite this, there are reasons to remain optimistic. Russell Martin has continued to play well, and along with Casey Blake and Matt Kemp there is little doubt that the Dodgers recent success will come back around once they get healthy.
I must admit that watching the Dodgers was a lot more fun when they were winning. The Latino’s sitting in front of us who had rolled two rows deep were shouting and whooping at every rally. Now, with a loss in the cards there’s only a mild mannered collection of upper middle class families who seem to have nothing interesting to say, and worst of all they don’t watch the basketball game on their phones and tell me the score whenever I ask it.
Now the lowly Dodgers slink away with their tails between their legs, even hitting in to a double play to end the game in the bottom of the ninth inning. The only salvageable moment of the game was the perfectly executed suicide squeeze to give the Tigers their fourth run of the game. The ferocity of the Tigers manager Jim Leyland as he switched pinch hitters in order to gain a slight advantage, reminded me what it would be like to be Joe Torre, only he’s my grandpa’s declawed cat because he just switched pitchers to avoid pitching to…another pitcher? If Joe Torre doesn’t feel like a nance for running to the bullpen when a pitcher came up to bat then nobody ever will.
My cabinet of trusted advisors who accompany me to every game had a good laugh after the game in the smoking room about that one, what a joke good ole’ Leyland had played on him, except that in truth it could have very nearly been the game. When Manny Ramirez came up to pinch hit in the sixth inning we were all sure that the Dodgers were about to blow the game wide open. One chance wasn’t enough though and the Dodgers would pester the Tigers until the very last.
Like a fly they were simply swatted away.
How did I get here though, miles from time and death, or am I? If we only remembered the value of those near and dear to us while they were alive then perhaps we would put them to better use. Of course the Angels across town could better themselves if they heeded that counsel every off-season. More than one star has been lost to an administration unappreciative of their services. Still, time and death, the love of life as Jack London put it. If you’ve not partaken in that harrowing story then I advise you to read that, AFTER you’ve finished reading this.
Ethier and Manny Ramirez were sitting on a bench on a Los Angeles front porch. Manny turned his head and glanced over at Ethier and said, “Hey, did you hear they’re building a new stadium in Detroit?”
“No.”
“But they aren’t telling anyone where it is. They’re worried that the Tigers will try and play there.”
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