Friday, April 20, 2012

Baby Drew: House Mom

Char:  Chris Young was literally just having an extended conversation with a bat in the dugout

Trinity:  um...okay

 Char:  he was! just talking to it  

Trinity:  lol!  

Char:  not to anyone else in the dugout with a bat in his hand, but talking to the bat It's Parra's bat  

Trinity:  giving it a pep talk?  

Char:  could be hes on the DL so he has to make his own fun  

Trinity:  so true

Char:  The Dbacks make me want to throw myself off a bridge  

Trinity:  oh. you think the dbacks make *you* want to throw yourself off a bridge? Today was the 100th anniversary of Fenway park game. Against the Yankees. The ANNIVERSARY of FENWAY. WE FUCKING LOST TO THE MOTHERFUCKING YANKEES  

Char:  at least losing to the Yankees is traditional?

 Trinity: IT WAS THE ANNIVERSARY OF FUCKING FENWAY FUCKING PARK!  

Char: :-(  

Trinity: god damn red sox  

Char: they miss Jacoby

Trinity: they're just stupid  

Char: and Bobby Valentie's running his mouth

 Trinity: lol. I miss Terry Francona

 Char: it was time to go especially considering that beer and friend chicken thing dbacks losing 7-0  

Trinity: lol, yeah aww

 Char: it's only the sixth  

Trinity: there's still time!  

Char: there's not a chance in hell we're scoring 8 runs  

Trinity: heehee

 Char: Stephen Drew made everybody T-shirts aww he's like the house mom

 Trinity: omg, that's so adorable  

Char: I wonder what else he brings from home?  

Trinity: freshly baked muffins, of course

 Char: Sandwiches with the crusts cut off  

Trinity: 8:45 pm chocolate chip cookies Char: I bet be brings water bottles with fresh slices of lemon in them  

Trinity: and scented candles for the clubhouse  

Char: He leaves notes in lockers. "You're appreciated!"  

Trinity: on post it notes! With little smiley face stickers  

Char: Yes! And he reminds everyone to put their uniforms where they belong to help the equipment managers  

Trinity: He makes signs in Print Shop to remind them not to spit on the clubhouse floor.  

Char: He always shares his sunflower seeds  

Trinity: of course. and you know he went to the paint your own pottery place and made everyone a personalized jar in which to spit the shells.  

Char: When he makes brownies, he never adds nuts because nobody likes brownies with nuts.  

Trinity: and someone might be allergic

 Char: you have to consider these things  

Trinity: you do! every Christmas he makes little gift bags for everyone and leaves them in the lockers before everyone else gets to the clubhouse. Homemade fudge and those slice and bake cookies with the christmas tree in the middle.  

Char: Chocolate chip cookie mix in mason jars. With a ribbon.  

Trinity: curled ribbon, naturally.

Char: But he respects Hanukkah too  

Trinity: and kwanzaa

Char: He explains how Sandra Lee's Kwanzaa cake was really insensitive  

Trinity: lol

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Diamondbacks Roster: Some Assembly Required

Chris Young went on the disabled list today.

Justin Upton is day-to-day with a thumb injury that he had to have drained of fluid the other day.*

Geoff Blum was placed on the DL last night though the only thing wrong with him is a terrible case of being mostly useless when the team needs a roster spot. Or, if you’re the Diamondbacks, “an oblique strain.” Yeah. That’s convenient.

Called up from Triple A in this fiasco is one guy who’s been raking** and one guy currently passing kidney stones. Because I guess there wasn’t anyone else available. Maybe someone with both an inflamed appendix and a nasty case of gout. But they had to find somebody. I mean, do we really want to see Willie Bloomquist in left field everyday?

I didn’t think so.

Young was on a tear to open the season. I mean a hitting-.410-with-5-home runs-13-RBI kind of tear. When Matt Kemp looks in the mirror, he sees Chris Young behind him getting closer and ever more threatening. If Kemp had Mad Eye Moody’s Foe Glass, he’d be seeing the whites of Chris Young’s eyes.

Everybody else: not so much. Miggy’s doing that thing where he tries to hit lots of home runs and forgets that he has a very pretty and decidedly effective swing when he’s not trying so hard he nearly spins in a circle and falls over like the least graceful kid trying to hit a pinata.*** Ryan Roberts has no idea what’s going. Paul Goldschmidt can’t seem to get a regular start and I’m pretty sure it’s making him sad. Besides Joe Saunders , the starting pitching has just been kind of okay.

Losing the one guy currently striking fear into the hearts of our enemies hurts. Especially since he made a beauty of a catch. Really. It was the kind of thing you can use to feel superior when your friends say that baseball players are fat and aren’t capable of doing anything more than standing still in the outfield as the ball falls into their gravitational well. I’m at least partially convinced he’s some sort of a superhero now, with the the way he flew through the air like that.

It just ended badly. As soon as he collided with the wall, I stopped making meatballs+ and began wailing like an old Italian lady. “No, Chris. Oh no. This is bad. This is so bad.”

And it was bad. The trouble is that while we can afford to lose Upton for a few days while he works that thumb thing out, losing Young at the same time puts the team in a much worse position. It’s like chopping someone’s legs off and then telling them to go run the Boston Marathon: yeah, they could do it but it takes a long time to get used to prosthetics and you trip and fall down a lot.

If we’re going to make it through, the other boys will have to step up. The are the Never Say Die-mondbacks and this is the first time this season where their backs against the wall. We’ll see how it goes. Until then. we’ll hope CY doesn’t go the way of Jacoby Ellsbury.

*Ew
*In Reno, where the air is so thin any hard hit ball is at-risk of entering a low Earth orbit
***Boy, it took me a long time to get to that analogy, didn’t it?
+Delicious snacks! And so portable!

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

VORSing the BMGM on Opening Day

We could play Opening Day bingo. I could feed my text into the Baseball Metaphor Generating Machine (it works by adjusting Value Over Replacement Simile) and talk about hope springing eternal. But let’s skip it. Especially since hope isn’t springing. Hope has sprung.

There’s a definite feeling among the team and the fans that this is the Diamondbacks’ year. The front office has made it very clear that they’re in win now mode -- you can tell because that’s the only way to justify spending $7.5 million on Jason Kubel just after Gerrado Parra wins a Gold Glove in left field. The front office wants to go to the World Series. Kirk Gibson wants it, the players want it, and the fans want it. This is it.

Which is why I was walking through Chase Field nearly vibrating with excitement and proclaiming, “It’s all happening!” over and over to a friend. Opening Day wasn’t about hope for me but about the exciting arrival of a day you’ve been looking forward to for a very long time. It’s Christmas. It’s getting on the plane to Disneyland after months of counting down the days. Something very good has been coming our way and it’s finally here..

And it was good. I got the chills as fighter jets flew over Chase Field (is there a dramatic flyover corps in the Air Force because if that’s all they do, it’s a pretty sweet gig). I sat in the sun. I dripped ice cream down the front of my brand new customized jersey. And I watched the Diamondbacks win.

Tim Lincecum, making poor choices, said leading into Opening ay that the first series was important, that it would set a certain tone after the defending World Series champs not only lost the division to Arizona but the Dbacks clinched the division while playing the Giants at home at Chase.

Timmy thought the games would make a statement and they did. They stated that Arizona is in this thing, that predictions of the Giants to walk over the division on the strength of their pitching and the return of Buster Posey riding a unicorn sent by God on a mission to deliver the Giants with championships were premature. The Diamondbacks sent a resounding message that if anyone wants to take the division, they’re going to have to fight.

Because, let’s face it, the games weren’t great. I was at the park Friday and Saturday and watched most of Sunday’s on TV. In the words of Cher Horowitz, the series was a complete Monet: okay from far away but up close it’s a total mess. The pitching was only all right, good enough when it needed to be. Kennedy and Hudson were just okay, Collmenter had a complete meltdown that has almost everybody reaching for the panic button. But Wade Miley saved the day on Sunday by refusing to allow any more runs and the Diamondbacks, comeback kings of 2011 rallied from being down 6-0 to win 6-7.

And the Giants esteemed pitching looked shaky. Lincecum in particular struggled - even I pointed out his loss in velocity. Goldy still owns him too, a storyline I look forward to following with glee.

But the point is that even if they win dirty, this team is going to win. That they’re good enough to do it. That they refuse to be written off. And besides the sheer delight of handing smug Giants their first 0-3 start in decades, that’s what I’m taking away from the series.

I’ve already sprung.

It’s going to be a fantastic season.

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Changes and Reflections

So. Some things have changed since the last time I was posting regularly here. Deepwater Horizon. Arab Spring. Occupy Wallstreet. I got a new laptop. Trinity and I took a trip to New York where we not only saw four Broadway shows in five days (we’re sports fans who like musicals because our interests are varied and complicated) but also saw the Diamondbacks play the Mets at Citi. I discovered CrossFit. My sister is about to get married.

Shit’s changed, y’all.

But even as life has gone on, what hasn’t changed is how I feel about baseball. I may not have been posting but I was still watching. I could never stop watching this game. I survived the 2010 bullpen - a bullpen so historically bad you have to go back decades to find anything worse. You could still recognize Diamondback fans from that year by the haunted look in their eyes. We went through some stuff.

I was watching in 2011, the year of the Never-Say-Die-mondbacks. I started the year hoping we wouldn’t come in last for a third year in a row and ended it listening on my phone while travelling in a shuttle bus between Tucson and Phoenix as the Diamondbacks took the Brewers into the tenth inning of game five of the NLDS and holding in my reactions lest my fellow passengers start wondering what’s with the crazy girl.

2011 was a gift. An unexpected ride from a team no one predicted to do much of anything and when it was over, I was grateful that I got to be a part of it, even in my own small way. Watching the boys scale the outfield fence to jump in the pool after clinching the West will remain one of my favorite moments from the year.

One of. Not top.

My top moment is game three of the NLDS. I was there.

The day didn’t start well. The 90-minute drive between Tucson and Phoenix took four hours thanks to a dust storm that completely shut down the highway and had me convinced I was a going to die. Seriously. I damn near called my mother to tell her I love. That was one of the most frightening experiences of my life. The landscape was alien when we could see it, as if we were travelling along the surface of the moon. There were times when visibility was reduced to zero. Driving down the freeway in a 15-passenger van in pitch blackness is something like going swimming with sharks while wearing Lady Gaga’s meat dress: terrifying on an absolutely primal level.



But I lived. And I made the game on time.

The seats were about 10 rows behind the Diamondbacks dugout. I went with my mother. I loved being able to explain who all the players were and why I love them. I loved explaining in-jokes and nicknames. I loved telling her that if she does nothing else, she had to boo when Prince Fielder came up to bat.

I loved chanting Goldschmidt’s name as the Brewers walked Miguel Montero to get to him. The bases were loaded, the crowd clamoring for magic. And it began. “Gold-SCHMIDT. Gold-SCHMIDT. Gold-SCHMIDT.” I was there when Paul Goldschmidt launched that baseball over the right field fence and became a legend.



The place became unglued. I’ve never heard a crowd yell like that. I was screaming, jumping up and down, I turned and hugged my mother because I was so happy, I felt like it was spewing out of me, like vampire sparkles in a Twilight movie. It was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen and the ultimate gift on the ultimate unexpected season.

Life still goes on but I’ll remember that moment forever.