The Tigers delayed the inevitable, and the Cards-Brewers series is tied. That's pretty much the wrap up from last night. In personal news, my DVR is threatening my marital harmony. My idea the entire day was to watch a few innings of the NL game, then watch X Factor with Kristine, and then catch the end of the game after that's done. The idea of watching X Factor in the middle was so it had some time to record and we could skip most, if not all, the commercials. For some reason, for the second time in a row, it did not record. Of course, it recorded Wednesday, when the show was bumped thanks to a rain delay in Detroit. Now I've got an upset wife who is pretty resentful towards baseball, just about in time for the World Series to roll around. I'm pretty sure that's going to put a damper on the start of the hockey season. But, sacrifices must be made. With the home front in this state, it's kind of hard to come up with good, creative blog posts. Especially centering around baseball. I feel kind of guilty writing about it when she's upset about me watching it so much. I think I need to get a job as a sportswriter so I have a good excuse to watch the games. As it stands, though, I'll just leave on this note. To the announcers (mostly because I'm not positive who was saying it): don't continue to argue a point when the blatant proof against you is staring you right in the face. Here is the video in question. I haven't heard the audio on this particular clip, so I'm not sure if this is exactly the same point in the game that I'm complaining about, but somebody keeps on and keeps on arguing that time wasn't given before the third base umpire disallowed a pitch because Octavio Dotel never came out of the stretch. When it was pretty clear here that the three umpires we can see on this clip all signaled for time. That was what was on the screen while one of the announcers (I think Darling, but I'm not 100%) kept insisting no time was called. At that point, it's time to concede that, awkward or not, the umpires might have gotten that one right. Before I talk about anything else, here's a Giants commercial I found on Uni Watch that made me smile. With that out of the way, it looks like the Tigers are done, and possibly the Brewers. The Cardinals offense has finally clicked, and they're doing it more or less without Berkman and Holliday. Pujols, on the other hand, is still a beast that Milwaukee's pitchers have no idea how to deal with. Nothing against Milwaukee. When he's right, I don't think any pitching staff really knows how to deal with Pujols. But, yes, the countdowns are on. 27 outs for the Rangers. They have to deal with Verlander tonight, who has looked better than CJ Wilson in these playoffs. That probably means Wilson is due, though. Combine that with the Tigers being so banged up, I don't even think this is going back to Texas. 54 outs for the Cardinals. I do think this one is going back to Milwaukee, very well all the way to seven games. I'm ready to change my pick, though. I really get the feeling the Cardinals are going to win this thing.
If we do get a St. Louis-Texas World Series, well, I think I'd find myself rooting for the Cardinals. Even though I've picked the Rangers to win the whole thing from the get go. And I still think they would win over either Milwaukee or St. Louis. I don't think I've ever picked the World Champion in the preseason, so that would be kind of exciting. Still, I'm most definitely a National League guy, and an NL Central guy at that. I'm rooting for whoever comes out of this series, and I think it will be a good one either way. Good game last night, and a very big win for the Tigers. Seems like it may have been Pyrrhic, though. More injuries to an already banged up line up. It might be curtains for the Tigers before they can get it back to Texas. They'll take the next step one way or another at 4 today. In St. Louis, though, the Cardinals are trying to become the big surprise team of the year. Series tied one all, in their home ball park, and the power of the Rally Squirrel is behind them. The team is giving out Rally Squirrel towels, and various shirts and dolls have popped up. The one pictured here is called the "official" version by CBS in St. Louis. He's got his own Wiki page, too. Combined with Torty and, of course, Fredbird, this year's Cardinal team might be the most animal-mascot-laden team in history. Will they be able to keep an awfully powerful Brewers team at bay, though? The Brewers were absolutely dreadful in Arizona last round. And through the year, they were markedly better in Miller Park than on the road. Combine that with the Cards stealing the last game, and things seem to bode well for St. Louis. Also throw in Carpenter is starting tonight, and I might be worried if I were a Brewer fan.* On the other hand, you know Milwaukee is going to score runs with those hitters, and if there's any pitcher on the staff who can get one on the road, it's Yovani Gallardo. He's gone eight and six innings in his postseason starts this year and given up all of two runs and ten hits. He's also paired his three walks with fourteen strikeouts. Averaging a strikeout an inning isn't too shabby. He's got better numbers through this postseason than he did in 2008, and he only pitched seven innings then. *Presumably I am, but actually watching the games, I have a hard time really picking a favorite. I'm really happy either way. To pick a winner, though, I'm going to have to go with the Cards tonight. Carpenter is darned good. I know, his first start against Philly didn't go so well. Three innings, four runs, three walks, only two strikeouts. Actually, over three innings, two strikeouts isn't bad, but the rest wasn't so great. But it should also be noted that the Cardinals messed around and won that game. Then the CC that's still in the playoffs got to lock horns with arguably the best pitcher of this generation (and former teammate) Roy Halladay. All Carpenter did was throw a complete game shut out, giving up only three hits.* I've got a feeling he's going to repeat that sort of performance. I don't know if I'm ready to pick St. Louis for the series just yet, but I'm picking them tonight. *Halladay, it should be noted, only gave up one run in eight innings, which turned out to be the only run of the game. Not too bad himself, but it doesn't matter if your team doesn't score a single run. As of today, I'm still picking the Rangers over either of these teams, but if the Cardinals can ride their status as the hottest team in baseball all the way to another World Championship, they would break an ugly pattern, as shown below. Sadly, it's much better than the Cubs' pattern. Apparently I take Columbus Day off. Actually, the problem is more of a sinus thing. The one downside of living with somebody is you tend to get sick right after they do, and that's happening to me. Oh well. The better news is the playoffs keep marching on, and yesterday was a doozy. In the interest of full disclosure, most of last night's games were watched over a game of Monopoly. I tried a strategy of building up the yellows and greens, and that failed miserably. I did lock down those properties, but couldn't get them built up enough and was first out of the game. Also, Rich Uncle Pennybags over there looks awfully upset for making it rain. Maybe he's giving all his money to the railroads at $200 a pop like I was last night. Anyway, my Rangers pick is looking awfully good after Nelson Cruz blasted a walk-off grand slam last night. That said, Detroit had plenty of chances to take care of the game in 9 innings. You can't let big opportunities slip away in the league championship. Now down 2-0, Detroit really needs to win at least two (if not all three) games at home to make this a series. Even if Detroit wins two, that means coming back to Texas down 3-2. I'm sure that's not exactly the situation they would like to walk into. In the National League, where they play real baseball, the Cardinals won a big one. 1-1 is a whole different ball game than 2-0. Pujols had a monster day, which is why he's the best offensive force I've seen in my lifetime. He even stole a run on this play. Pretty impressive stuff, especially for somebody who's not known to be especially fast. They'll take the day off to get back to St. Louis. Rangers-Tigers pick it back up tonight at 8. I'm sure I'll be watching in a cold medicine induced stupor. Thoughtful posts will return at the point where I can have thoughts again. Who can't love this video of Troy Pola-however-you-spell-it (just kidding, it's Polamalu) pretending to be a wax figure? Great theater! Also, the White Sox hired Robin Ventura as their manager. He was a fine enough player, but I never imagined him back in the dugout. Besides, do you really want your manager to be most famous for getting taken to task by a 40-year-old Nolan Ryan? I mean, really, this was the third image result for Robin Ventura. I didn't even have to add Ryan to the search! And a hearty congratulations to the Tigers for taking out the Yankees. I'm very pleased to be wrong. I don't really understand what Girardi was thinking when he had CC Sabathia walk Miguel Cabrera to get to Victor Martinez. Sure, Miggy won the AL batting title and all, but V-Mart was CC's catcher for a pretty long time. He knows exactly what CC has and likes to do. And what happened? Well, thanks to the wonder of the internet, I don't have to tell you. Just click here. I would embed it, but you know, MLB isn't really forward thinking like that. I can embed Joaquin Benoit being forced to take off a bandage covering a pretty painful looking boil or something. It's the NL's turn tonight. I have to say, I'm an unabashed homer. I'm definitely pulling for the Central teams. I'll be a little sad if the first All-Central NLCS isn't Cubs-Cards, but I'm okay with my NL Pennant Winner Brewers moving on and seeing Philly and the insufferable fans (and media attention) getting knocked out early like the Yankees. Brew Crew starts at five today. I'm sure I'll be paying attention during my last hour at work before I'm released to the weekend.
In other sporting news before I go: the Blackhawks kick off tonight in Dallas. Then they bring Dallas back to Chicago to play tomorrow. I'm predicting a 2-0 start for the 'Hawks. Purdue starts B1G play tomorrow against Minnesota (I think we're going), which I also think they will win. Wabash hosts Washington,* which I'm also saying 'Bash wins. We played awful against Washington last year, we'll be looking for some vengeance this year. *That's the Washington Bears out of St. Louis, where they hold presidential debates. Not the Washington Huskies from the west coast. Shaping up to be a great sports weekend. I intend on soaking it up. It wasn't a surprise. Maybe that it happened this quickly, sure. But the final result, no. We knew Steve Jobs was in for a tragically short life during his hiatuses from Apple. The cancer finally won last night. Steve was 56. Apple has had it's ups and downs to be sure. A giant at the outset of personal computer, the Jobs-Wozniack team (along with their investors) started with the Apple II* and never looked back. *The Apple II is one of my first experiences with computers, along with Atari (with BASIC). I'm sure I am not alone, especially in my generation. Except, of course, they did look back. After the initial success of Macintosh (and a brilliant commercial, shown below), the 1990's proved to be a little more difficult. IBM (and IBM clones) running Windows proved to be the commercial smash that really took home computing mainstream. But, none of that was Jobs' fault. He was forced out in 1985 over, as I understand it, being difficult to work with. Jobs floundered for a bit after that before latching on to Pixar, which you may have heard of. Apple, in the meantime, was a sick company. They brought Jobs back on in 1997, and he turned the company around quickly. While they would never overtake Microsoft, Mac took a big bite out of the computer industry starting with the iMac, putting a new focus on the aesthetic of computers. It was a badly needed breath of fresh air and forced other manufacturers to follow suit.*
*It should be noted they never took it to the same level Apple did. Just enough to stay relevant. In 2001, the game changed. Apple decided it could do more than computers. Out came the iPod, along with iTunes. Following that came the iPhone and now the iPad. The iPad especially demonstrates how much influence Apple has. Tablet PCs had been around for a while, and were thoroughly ignored by the public. Apple takes a swing at it, and now it's the hot new thing. Why did the iPad succeed while others failed? I don't entirely know. Especially not to the level it succeeded. Other than having a bigger screen and being prettier. That seems fairly minor to have the kind of runaway success* it has had. That seems to be the power of Jobs. *Runaway success definitely compared to other tablets, anyway. Apple has always seemed to have a quasi-religious following, especially since the iPod-era, for lack of a better name. That's the kind of following that allowed Apple to have more cash on hand than the US Government. Well, at least on Apple's end. Uncle Sam had (has?) its own problems to help on that end. Now that the leadership of Jobs is absent again, it will be interesting to see if Apple stays on top. Surely Jobs wasn't the only visionary to push Apple forward, but the malaise of the 90's could very well set in again.* *For a decade that was really a very good one economically, it seems odd that Apple struggled so much, but now is one of the few companies to really do well during the downturn of Post-9/11. I guess that's the power of finding your niche. The passing of Jobs is a major one in tech circles. The first of this generation of tech giants to pass. Passing on at 56 is a big help to that. I'm sure he didn't feel like he'd lived half his life at 28, but I'm told that's just the mystery of existence. RIP, Steve. We'll see if Bill Gates can get as touching an xkcd as you did. I was all getting ready to write about Gregg Easterbrook today. He writes TMQ over at ESPN, and he is one smug son of a bitch. But, he's usually right (or at least has a point). This last one, though, didn't do it for me. That's about all I'm going to say for the moment, though, because I might revisit that.
In what I'm actually going to do is post some pictures. Of a simpler time, when the Big 10 actually had 10 teams, the Big 12 hadn't actually been created yet to slowly collapse, and the Pac-10 (or Pac-8, as it probably was at the time) was a distant world. I love these paintings and would gladly hang one on my wall, even though I'm not entirely happy with the direction they took Pete. Apparently the artist (interview of sorts over at Uni Watch) would like to do some updated versions, but that has to be put on hold until things settle down a bit. It's probably not really news by now that I have a little man-crush on Justin Verlander. I agree with Posnanski that he is head and shoulders the most exciting player in baseball today. Sure, Jose Reyes can run a little bit. When Pujols is right, he is a hitting machine. But there is nobody like Verlander. There has been nobody since Nolan Ryan that gives you the same sort of feeling every time they take the mound. That you might see something special. Could be a no-hitter every time out. Now, last night, he got off to a rough start. With the whole rain delay stuff, nobody really knew what to expect out of the aces last night. Sabathia was thoroughly average and out of gas by the fifth inning. I really don't know why Girardi sent him back out in the sixth. A little disappointing, but there you go. Verlander got off to a rocky start. He seems to get nervous at the start of a lot games, moreso in his playoff career. But once he settled in, boy, he was locked in. Watching him last night, you would have thought he was in the midst of something for the ages. His fastball was regularly hitting or breaking 100 MPH. His curveball was absolutely spectacular. Coming off an inning and all the work of getting ready for a game and trying to stay loose until they either called the game or Jim Leyland said it was too long a delay, nobody was really sure how that might affect things. As it turned out, it seemed to weigh much heavier on Sabathia. That, and CC seemed to come to the realization that Verlander was settling in and he was going to have to step up his game. Unfortunately for New York, that gear wasn't there. Verlander ran into a little more trouble in the 7th. It seemed he was cruising along until he got squeezed a bit pitching to Posada.* That (and dropping a throw back to him) seemed to take him out of his rhythm a bit, long enough to hurt him for a couple more runs. At the end of the day, he threw 8 innings, which is impressive on its own. Otherwise, four runs, six hits, three walks, eleven strikeouts. Other than the strikeout number, it looks like a thoroughly average start. *On the radio this morning, the Mikes (who I know I said I would stop listening to) were talking about how CC got squeezed. I thought it was worse for the Verlander myself, but I suppose that just means the umpire was calling a tight strike zone both ways. It comes back to Verlander just makes everything look more exciting. The pitches he throws drop jaws. The way he carries himself screams bad ass. I mean, look at that picture. If you still have the game recorded, look at how he walks off the field after ending the inning (usually via strikeout). He just makes it look like you're watching something special, even if the numbers don't align. Plus, I'm sure Detroit was even more excited than usual to be getting a chance to put away the Yankees. They'll go at it again tonight. The Yankees' entire season relies on the ever-erratic AJ Burnett. He'll either lay down a real stinker or pull a gem out of his back pocket, a la the World Series a couple years ago. In the other series, Jaime Garcia (who apparently is a Phillie-killer) tries to really put a dent in Philly's coronation, the Brewers go for the sweep (I think they'll get it), and the Rangers try to put away the Rays (not as convinced about that one). I'm not sure if I really agree with this map (click it for the original), but it's cute enough I posted it. I really only disagree with the Rangers section. The attendance at Rangers Ballpark seems to say plenty of people are interested. I haven't paid as much attention, but there sure seemed to be plenty of local coverage during last year's run to the playoffs, I would assume the buzz would be pretty darned close again this year. Plus, the Cowboys kind of suck and have for a little while. For a recap,* the Brewers were the most impressive team of the weekend. They have the only 2-0 lead and have pretty soundly spanked what turned out to be a very solid Diamondbacks squad. I feel a whole lot better about picking them to make the World Series now. The Cardinals collapsed on Saturday, and I had them dead in the water after their start on Sunday, but they surprised me. I didn't know if they had any fight left in them after the sprint to even make the playoffs, but clearly there's something left in the tank. Now that the series is coming back to St. Louis for a couple games, this could get real interesting. * Unfortunately, because it's a very busy Monday at work, I can't do much more than a recap. Over in the AL, the Tigers and Yankees continue to look very, very evenly matched. The Yankees won a funky rain-postponed game that robbed us of a straight Sabathia-Verlander tangle. The Tigers won a tight game yesterday. The good news is the aces will get another shot at it (with a tied series, even) tonight. Since the game was stopped so early last time, I don't think it will really favor one side or the other. In the Rays-Rangers, I didn't see yesterday's game, but I read they rode a big 4th inning to a win. I did watch game one, though, and I could not have been more impressed with Matt Moore. My goodness, if Joe Maddon says he's not going to pitch him the rest of the series, well, I guess that's why he's the manager, but I would second guess him. The Rangers, if you haven't heard, have a top-notch line up. Moore held them scoreless (and to two Josh Hamilton hits) for seven innings. CJ Wilson didn't have it, but it doesn't really matter when you don't score any runs. I'd be running what should be a very fresh Moore out there ASAP if I were the Rays. The AL is back on tonight. I'm not home by myself, so I probably won't get to watch the Rays & Rangers again. But I'll be watching the night cap. I've been waiting for this match up for a long time. |
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