Friday, September 10, 2010
And That Happened
Posted by Craig CalcaterraGiants 7, Padres 3: Round one goes to the Giants, who pull to within one game of the lead. And they did it in an unexpected way for this team in this park: the long ball. Huff, Posey, Burrell and Uribe all went yard. Matt Cain -- who has had some serious issues vs. the Padres recently -- took a three-hitter into the ninth. He worked the corners and threw lots of strikes. Jon Garland didn't have so great a night: "Terrible, terrible, especially to start a series. I guarantee you no person in San Diego feels worse than I do, and I get to go home and sleep on it. It's going to be a fun night." Poor, poor baby. And he's wrong anyway: my brother lives there, and he's got kidney stones right now. He feels way, way worse.
Rockies 6, Reds 5: Colorado gains a game as well. And they took the lead in this one in awesomely spectacular style. Check it out. Reds pitcher Nick Masset was on some other planet on that play, it seems. Or was he? "Before I was about to throw that pitch, I was going to fake to third and go to first," Masset said. What a shame. If that's really true, it would have been the first time in recorded baseball history that the fake-to-third-throw-to-first play had ever worked.
Tigers 6, White Sox 3: Chicago is six back with 22 games to play. The only glimmer of hope they seem to have is that the Twins were 5.5 back with 22 to play last year and forced a tie. Countering that: unlike the 2009 Tigers, the 2010 Twins don't seem like a team that is going to struggle down the stretch.
Cardinals 11, Braves 4: Braves fans may be the only people on the planet who don't mind that the whole world was all Brett Favre-crazy last night, because this was some embarrassing stuff. Colby Rasmus was 4 for 4 with two homers and four RBI. FOX's Dayn Perry -- a Cardinals fan -- on Twitter last night: "Let's hope that wasn't Colby's Braves audition." I don't care if he was joking. That's the only thing that made me feel remotely good about this one.
Rangers 4, Blues Jays 2: Colby Lewis won for the first time in forever. Jose Bautista hit his 44th home run.
Astros 3, Dodgers 2: Yay! John Lindsey got to bat! He flied out to center while pinch hitting for Ted Lilly, but an at bat is an at bat. And he probably had a lot of family in the stands, as he's from nearby Mississippi. Lindsey is about the only thing interesting or, at the very least, non-despressing about the Dodgers these days.
Craig writes the HardballTalk blog for NBC Sports.com
Contrary to popular misconception, the fake third-to-first does work. I go (read: attend and watch in person, keeping score) to 75-85 games a year and I see it successfully done at least once a year.