The first games

I’m still busy busy busy at work, but I couldn’t let the first games pass with no comment, so here’s a quick post with no links, mainly designed to get other people’s impressions of yesterday’s games.

1) I know one game does not a series make, but I very much enjoyed the dazed look that Odalis Perez wore when he left the mound in yesterday’s Cards/Dodgers game. The last time a team hit five home runs in a game in a division series–wait–no team had ever done that before. It was a good start.

2) I was a bit bothered by the curtain calls at Busch Stadium yesterday, though. Curtain calls seem to me to be a bit disrespectful. I know players feel like the crowd is compelling them to come out, and they have to do it to shut up the crowd, but like a band after playing a perfunctory encore, they should just ignore the noise. Eventually it’ll go away. No matter how hard I stomped my feet at his show, Nick Lowe wasn’t going to come back out and play “I’ve Been Everywhere.”

3) The Red Sox did as expected. I expect they’ll do more of the same in games 2 and 3. And Johnny Damon’s hair seems to be even longer than before: it’s down past his shoulders.

4) I finally saw Scooter the Talking Baseball last night. Acting as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world, Joe Buck said, “And now, to tell us some more about the change-up, here’s Scooter.” And there he was, unsettlingly flesh-colored, with a weird stitching mouth and backwards ball cap. Until that moment, I was still trying to make myself believe that he was a figment of Jim’s imagination. But no: Fox really does think kids are this stupid.

5) After the umpires took back the Sierra home run last night, deciding that it was foul after all, I decided that the only thing better than a Yankee making an out is a Yankee thinking he’s hit a home run, then making an out. I decided that every time a Yankee hits a foul ball–even just a grounder–the umpires should wave their fingers for a home run, make the hitter run the bases, then confer and send him back to the plate. Now that would be fun.

Original comments…

Levi: Oh, and how could I have forgotten the way the radar gun reading bursts into flames any time a pitch gets above about 92 mph? What a wealth of new excitement that brought to my enjoyment of the game! Thank you, Fox! Thank you!

maura: that near-hr was ruben sierra’s, actually. he promptly struck out.

Levi: Thanks, Mo. I fixed it.

Jason: When is Fox going to bring out the blue dot to follow where the ball goes? And when will we see Calista Flockhart eating a hot dog?!?!?

stacey: i was DEEPLY disappointed that sierra was not required to run the bases in reverse.

The Designated Hitter

Steven Goldman, writer of The Pinstriped Bible, a Yankees site worth reading–despite not being a Yankee-hating site–today calls the Designated Hitter “the Free Parking of baseball.”

Aside from the fact that the DH sucks all the time, whereas Free Parking only sucks when your opponent lands on it, I think he’s right on. Finding a good DH should be the easiest thing in the world for a team. That’s why, when the Cardinals (in interleague play) batted Miguel Cairo there a few times, or when the Yankees, this season, have batted Ruben Sierra there against lefties, it has brought sorrow and joy, respectively.