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Last night's game was sort of a very pleasant demonstration of Sod's Law. A more expansive version of Murphy's Law, it holds that as soon
as you commit yourself to a statement, events will immediately demonstrate just how wrong you are.
Ted Lilly has driven me crazy this year. I don't think Frank Menechino is a particularly good ballplayer. I was convinced that blowing a wide
variety of comebacks on Tuesday night would be the sort of setback that would lead to a letdown for the Jays. I thought Ken Macha's threatened fine for showing up early would lead to a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed A's team. I thought that Rod Black would be horrendous ... OK, so not everything went against expectations.
But even there, he was an entertaining kind of terrible, and I was pleasantly shocked by almost everything else. How 'bout those Jays?
Things that struck me:
* On the Sportscentre immediately before the game, Dan Shulman read the baseball-related Top Ten. I wept. Going from Shulman to Black is the baseball-televisual equivalent of Lucifer's expulsion from heaven.
* That said, Black's hilariously overblown pregame intros should be preserved for posterity. Our grandchildren would be the poorer for not getting to hear Rod, in full overly dramatic mode, saying things like "Miguel Batista loaded 'em up, and the A's unloaded on him." I'm alarmed to say that he's growing on me in a "William Shatner is so square he's hip" kind of way.
* Vernon Wells is strong. The double in the first was muscled all the way to the opposite field gap, and the homer in the eighth, of course, was crushed.
* Eric Hinske keeps looking like he's figured it out. His at bat in the second, when he doubled Zaun to third, was wonderful. He stayed back on a tough 2-2 pitch and hit a rocket over Mark Kotsay's head. It was exactly the sort of at-bat that keeps people hoping he's got it figured out. Then he went back to looking terrible for the rest of the evening. It's tough to watch, because nobody tries harder.
* Batting Alex Rios immediately before Frank Menechino produces about the biggest contrast in body types in the right-handed batter's box imaginable.
* Ted Lilly was good for six innings and otherworldly for one last night. That one, of course, was the fourth, when he made Eric Chavez, Bobby Kielty and Eric Byrnes look silly with great breaking stuff. In fact, so good was the breaking stuff-how often do you see a pitcher freeze three major league batters in a row? Such has been Lilly's season thus far that I was actually worried he'd fall back into the pattern he was in earlier of never going to the fastball. I shouldn't have worried -- he got Chavez again in the sixth on a high fastball that made Chavez look really, really awkward as he swung and missed.
* Scott Podsednik is the AL's last man? Talk about a Chicago-style election...
* I hate it when pitchers crouch on the mound immediately after the batter hits a fly ball, as Lilly did when Swisher flew out to the track in the fifth. It is second only to whirling around with a shocked facial expression on my list of Really Bad Signs.
* Russ Adams looked really good turning the two 4-6-3 double plays. I realize that the pivot is (a) the other way and (b) more difficult at second, but I couldn't help wishing that Gross was in the game other than Menechino when Adams turned that play in the fifth....
* Which was promptly followed by Menechino leading off the Jays' fifth with a double. Verbatim from my notes at the time: "Frank Menechino seems determined to make me look like an idiot."
* You know that question about what music you would choose to stride to the plate? A friend of mine goes for Europe's "Final Countdown." It might be a good idea if you were exclusively used as a late-inning pinch-hitter, but it would robably sound weird in the top of the fourth in a 5-2 game.
* I was very surprised to see Blanton come out for the sixth, after the way the Jays were hitting him in the fifth -- everything, even the outs, were hard-hit balls. That said, except for that one inning, Blanton pitched very well. The only hard-hit ball he gave up after getting whacked around in the fifth was a single in the seventh by ... Frank Menechino.
* Re: Rod Black thinking that the All-Star Game shouldn't determine home-field advantage for the World Series. I agree with Rod Black about something baseball related. Shoot me now.
* Black refers to Orlando Hudson being on "the lam." If so, he's not doing a very good job of running from the cops -- they've shown him on national TV repeatedly.
* In the seventh, Bobby Kielty leads off with a single lashed up the middle. I'm glad to see he's bounced back. Also, was his hair really that bright when he played for Toronto?
* Russ Adams looks very good turning another 4-6-3 to end the seventh, prompting another bout of wishing they'd try him at second...
* On companies sponsoring pitching changes: Isn't there a risk of your company being subconsciously associated with guys like Matt Whiteside?
* Eric Hinske is lucky he isn't a cricketer, or that HBP by Yabu in the eighth would show up in the boxscore the next day as "Hinske lbw b/Yabu."
* Verbatim from the notes: "The hobbits thing is fun, but I think Menechino and McDonald are more Merry and Pippin than Frodo and Sam." Menechino gets another hard-hit single. "I wonder if Menechino would hire me to think condescendingly of him at key moments."
* Ricardo Rincon: 0 IP, 1 R, 0 H, 1 ER, 1 BB, 0 K, 1 WP, 4 pitches, 0 strikes, 4 balls. Tough night.
* After Johnson bloops a single off Ryan Glynn, I write "It's hard luck on Glynn -- he makes Wells look foolish on strike one." Then Glynn hangs a slider, and someone gets a souvenir. Attention Toronto Blue Jays: For a reasonable fee, I will watch your games and write notes like this one about your opponents all season long.
* Rod Black condescends to tell us that Reed Johnson entered as a defensive replacement several innings ago as the top of the ninth begins. Cue explosion on my couch. I don't want to sound too pompous here, and I realize that scoring games, as I do, is an increasingly unusual hobby, but would it be too much to ask that the broadcasters tell us who is in the game? It's bad enough when they won't tell you if a dropped ball on a tough play's been scored a hit or an error. Forgetting to mention a substitution? Sheesh.
* Finally, in the post-game interviews, it's good that Vernon is talking about winning a championship. Nuts, but good.
Anyway, those were my chief impressions of the game. What did everyone else think?
