Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Game 5 of the ALCS

I found myself home early today for some bi-naz so I'm going to share some live-blogging thoughts of today's elimination game!  Yay!

-Top of the fourth inning.  Lance Berkman!  Hahahaha!  Oh man.  Running a straight line into foul territory for a pop foul, he managed to slip with BOTH feet and fall down flat on his back.  "Did he hit his head?"  "Maybe it's whiplash?" the intrepid TBS forensic doctors intoned, before a commerical-break worth of research yielded this conclusion from Craig Sager: "MY SUITS BLAH BLAH BLAH!!!"  Also, "Berkman told Joe Girardi he got the wind knocked out of him."  Awesome.

-Oh look it's Brett Fucking Gardner.  I hate Brett Gardner.  He sucks but he's white, dives into first base and runs fast, so naturally he's key to the Yankees offense, along with Derek Jeter's steely gaze and Jorge Posada's inability to catch three outs in a row without 50 trips to the mound.  Brett Gardner runs fast.  That is all.  So do some horses.  GARDNER STRIKES OUT!!!  Fuck that guy.

-After the Gardner strikeout we get a shot of Lance Berkman in the dugout.  Poor guy.  Get that man a wheelchair and some chamomile!

-5-1 after a homerun from Matt Treanor but the Yankees have two on with runners in on second and third with one out.  Ron Washington decides NOT to walk Marcus Thames, even though Lance Berkman is up next and, as John Smoltz says in the booth, is a double-play candidate.  Yes.  Yes he is.  Not because he's slow, but because he'll need to run in a straight line to get to first and that's not really his thing.

-Washington comes to his sense, walks Thames.  Berkman walks up to bat slowly, falls face first onto home plate.

-Berkman flies out, Swisher tags up and scores.  Berkman jogs back to the dugout for a high-five but trips over an extra long piece of grass.

-Inning over.  Sabathia still going strong.  In the dugout.  With his nacho platter.  He's also pitching today too; only one blemish in a day otherwise full of donuts.  Har.

-First and second for the Rangers, one out.  Francoeur singles, bases loaded!  Swisher makes a "great play" to keep the ball from going to the wall, even though it bounced right in front of him and hit him in the chest.  After going 0-2 on Matt Treanor, Sabathia throws strike three but Posada blows the frame job and Treanor's still alive. 

-3-2 pitch!

-Groundout, run scores, 6-2 game.

-How are you even a minor league catcher if you have to run out to the mount all the damn time?  Stupid Posada.

-Mitch Moreland is having a ridiculous at-bat.  He fouled off a pitch so far outside the ballboy had to lean over, then another curve right at the knees, and just hit another one that would've beaned a right-handed batter.  Sabathia eventually strikes him out and ends the inning on the same pitched that Posada blew earlier, a curve that cut across the inside corner.  Posada manages not to fuck this one up and the inning is over.  Maybe Sabathia should job to home after each pitch for meetings with Posada: "Hey Fucker, catch the ball like this.  M'kay?"

-Granderson leads off with a shallow pop up to the third baseman, except this is Yankee Stadium so it goes off the wall for a double.  There are seriously highway rest-stop parking lots bigger than this Little League Yankee Stadium.

-Runners at the corners because of Derek Jeter's amazing ability to control the motion of the earth and draw a walk.

-Kinsler makes a tough pick-up to start the inning ending double-play.  Commercial!  Buy a Blackberry because only Blackberry allows you to, um, drive a cupcake maker van?

-Reader Matt wants the hockey scores, so here's the latest: Minnesota Wild Fan: 1, Rick Rypien: at least 5.

-Kerry Wood in the game now and has run up a 2-2 count without requiring multiple season-ending surgery.

-Lead-off runner aboard as Wood jumped up and just missed a high bouncer.  Both his shoulders are separated.  Dr. James Andrews readies his credit card for another territory to his personal island.

-Kerry Wood's throw is OVER EVERYTHING!  Jeff Blauser scores!

-Readers are up in arms over the lack of tsn.ca content in the liveblog.  If only there was a site that catered exclusively to the TSN and Toronto Maple Leafs audience...

-Elvis Andrus hates his team and comebacks.  Derek Jeter with a, you guess it, "brilliant play."  He caught the ball and tagged out a runner by five feet, so brilliance is now measured by a player's ability to not turn around and throw balls into center field.  Kerry Wood's last pitch was therefore also brilliant, despite being two feet outside.

-How do you get picked off second base when Josh Hamilton's at the plate with one out?  Didn't Andrus see the big graphic about how Hamilton was tied for the most single-ALCS homeruns ever with four?  It was all over the screen!

-Hamilton out, onto the seventh.  Rodriguez picks up a one out walk but not as well as Jeter would've.

-A-Rod steals second, because he is greedy.  Jeter would've done it for the team.  Speaking of his team, Marcus Thames hit the last pitch so far you wouldn't even measure it in feet. Maybe parsecs.  It was foul though, and Rodriguez jogs back to second in the richest way possible.

-Lance Berkman returns to the game!  Moonwalking up to home plate, he is the picture of confidence, poise and dexterity.   Quickly down 0-2.  That's the number of feet touching the ground; the number of balls and strikes is uninteresting.

-Berkman strikes out, teammates run out and carry him to the dugout.  All but Mark Texeira, who sits in the dugout and shakes his head, laughing quietly at the thought of a grown man, a professional world-class athlete, unable to run in a straight line without hurting himself.

-A quick top of the eighth, ended by A-Rod's diving catch and accurate throw to get Ian Kinsler.  Yankee fans boo and hold up signs to bring back Scott Brosius.

-If the Yankees hold on, and they absolutely will with only a half inning left and the Yankees still with Rivera in the holster, their pitching is in decent shape going back to Texas.  Phillip Hughes will go Game 6 and Andy Pettite goes Game 7.  The Rangers will send out Colby Lewis in Game 6, so they have the edge there, and of course anytime you've got Andy Pettite pitching a Game 7 on normal rest you've got to like your chances.*

-Curtis Granderson continues to make weak contact with the ball.  This time he manages to feebly loop a ball into shallow right field for an easy out.  EXCEPT this is Little League Yankee Stadium, so it's a line drive homerun.  You could spit it over the fence from home plate.

-Derek Jeter continues to make incredible plays.  "That's what makes Jeter, Jeter."  Yes.  THIS is what makes Jeter, Jeter:  Making awful contact on a pitch you just plain misjudged, rolling it 40 feet into a lucky dead spot in the infield, and smiling like a motherfucker over your good luck.

*Unless the other team is starting a cyborg, built from Walter Johnson's blood mixed with a liquid metal compound, sent back through time for the sole purpose of making people believe in a future worth saving through his pitching skills alone.

-Sportsnet Update!  Rick Rypien has been suspended indefinately pending a hearing from the NHL about jumping up and grabbing a fan against the Wild last night.  Everyone knows this so this isn't really news.  But what IS news... is what Francois Beauchemin and Ron Wilson think about it!  SPOILER ALERT: Nothing interesting.

-Joe Girardi decides that this is the last game of the series and he does NOT want Joba Chamberlain fucking up a five run lead.  Mariano Rivera and his one pitch are the greatest weapon a manager can summon against a team looking for a six run inning.  Except, of course, for literally any other pitcher in the majors, and most AAA pitchers too.

-The Yankees win!  No they don't!  That pitch was a foot outside!  Just because a catcher catches a pitch without moving his glove doesn't mean it's automatically a strike.  Posada was so far outside he was drinking Gatorade from the dugout.

-Moreland singles to left, the tying run is now six batters away.  Andrus fouls out to Berkman though, who crawls his way toward the stands to make the catch.  No more of that "running" for me!

-And that'll do.  Game 6 coming up from Texas!  Go Not Yankees!  The Not Yankees have always been my favorite team, ever since their World Series victories in 2008!

5 comments:

Matt Z. said...

Can you blog the hockey scores?

Leafs Fan #69 said...

Let's talk about how awesome the Maple Leafs are!

RandomGuy said...

Sorry I thought this was Duthie or Onrait's blog... seeya.

Matt Z. said...

So true. Yankees are the worst thing in sports. I like cheering against them more than I like cheering for any other team.

Troy said...

I agree with this, but also I don't?