Many, Many Pitchers Duel in WS G1

ST. LOUIS--As promised, Game 1 of this 2011 World Series ended up a chess match between the managers: stony LaRussa of Saint Lou and fist-pumping Washington of the Republic of Texas.  You wouldn't have guessed it from the beginning, though, as each team's starter threw solid scoreless innings to break in this Championship; three from the Lawmen's Wilson and four from Carpenter of the Redbirds.  Even more so, it was tied up at 2 runs apiece after Five, with both starters still kicking the mud behind the pitcher's plate.

All four of those runs were pretty runs to boot, with St. Louis striking first in their Fourth.  Slugger Pujols (though without a hit on the night) hopped aboard getting ankle-boned by a Wilson fastball.  Then a brace of knife-edge doubles sliced right along the first base line, one from Holliday to move Albert over to third, the second from the salt-and-pepper bearded Berkman to score them both.  The Redbirds pushed to tack on some more, but left Lance and eventually Punto stranded on the bags.

Then in Texas's Own Fifth, one tall dark and handsome home run sent deep into the seats off the stick of Catcher Napoli brought in Two Texans, himself and Cruz, who had reached on a standard-issue single two batters before.

On to the Cardinals' Sixth, alltiedup, and Third Baseman Freese wallops a double deep into the CF gap.  Catcher Molina is up next and he strikes out, but not before Freese moves over to third on Wilson's only wild pitch of the night.  Next up is Second Baseman Punto, who draws himself a walk, and then the chess strategy begins in earnest.  With runners at the corners, Washington offers up the impressive and right-handed Ogando Defense.  LaRussa counters with the Allen Craig Gambit, pinching for his pitcher's number 9 slot.

Here is the crux of the game, and like so many cruxes of good baseball or good chess, recognized as it occurs, but only seen for its true brilliance after it's reverberations resound through the rest of the game.  Here is the flame-throwing Dominican against the sophomore Craig, both just now tapped on the shoulder.  Here is Ogando, throwing hot and hard past Craig, until the erstwhile batter finally slices off just enough of a fastball to curl the ball like a wood shaving onto the very edge of right field.  Here is the outfielder Cruz, charging, leaping like a hurdler, his glove extended.  Here is the ball finding the lawn just in front of him, here Freese around to score, Cardinals ahead 3-2.

Now the two managers make steeples out of their fingertips and eye the board beadily.  The Ogando Defense, though broken, holds.  LaRussa plays a Salas Feint; Salas allows a hit by Cruz and walks Napoli.  LaRussa switches to a Rzepczynski Attack and shuts down the Rangers with two impressive strikeouts, despite Washington's attempt to make a Gentry Switch for Left Fielder Murphy.  Washington, from his list of pitchers, plays a strong Gonzalez Variation, then finishes out the Feldman Line.  LaRussa counters with the Dotel-Rhodes Combination, and grinds out the Series-opening win with a trademark Motte Endgame, and the advantage of Allen Craig's sixth inning pinch-hit RBI single remains the difference.

In this the first game between our two heavy-hitting pennant recipients, the combined eight relief pitchers worked a total of 6-1/3 innings, struck out four, and permitted just three hits and no runs.  Cardinals win 3-2, and lead the Series 1-0.

The Laws of McRae Park Wiffle Ball

1. First of all, this isn’t technically Wiffle ® ™ ©  Ball.  This is a bunch of people in a park with a soft (really soft) foam ball and some bats.  We hit the ball.  We talk a little trash.  We may or may not keep score, or even count outs.  It’s fun.  If you’re going to go complain because we’re not using the skinny yellow bat and the regulation Wiffle ® ™ © Ball, maybe you should just go join a Wiffle ® ™ © Ball league, if you truly desire to suck all the fun out of it for yourself.  But don’t suck the fun out of it for us too.

2. The Ball: Made of foam, fat as a grapefruit, and soft enough that when my kid pitches wild and hits the baby sitting on the picnic blanket in the head, she hardly even notices.  Remember to squeeze it when you catch a pop fly or it will just bounce off your hands.

3. The Bat(s): Fat, skinny, foam, plastic, big or little, depending on your age.

4. The Bases: Yes, we will be running the bases.  Yes, grandma, we WILL be running the bases.  Preferably in the order 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and home; though some of the under-5 set have been known to go in reverse or random order (sometimes both at the same time).  Whatever.  12 paces apart seems to make it a good race between the baserunners and the fielders.

5.  The Players: Everyone plays: me, the wife, the kids, grandpa, grandma, random kids and/or grown-ups who happen to wander by.  Even the baby, though she is the perpetual catcher/backstop/occasional ball thief.  Players may join in at any time.

6. Balls and Strikes: Will not be counted.  Throw the ball where they can hit it.  Otherwise, the rest of us are just standing around.  If the batter is under 4 their mom or dad might help with the hitting.  Being hit by a pitch does not entitle you to first base, but it does entitle you to pretend to wince and/or writhe on the ground and/or dance about in simulated pain and agony.  Charging the mound is not discouraged by these laws.

7. Ground Rules: If we’re under the pine tree, over the fence is a home run.  Everything else is playable.  If you hit it into the pine tree, you’re out, and everyone else is entitled to free hits on you for as long as it takes my eight-year-old to climb the tree and shake the ball out.  Otherwise, if you hit it foul, it’s your job to go get it.  If you hit a home run, somebody else has to get it.

8.  Making an Out: Outs can be made in several ways.  A caught fly ball is an out.  Force outs and tag outs are made in the usual manner.  If you don’t have a fielder nearby, just throw the ball at the runner, and if you hit him, he’s out.  Tackling and/or holding a baserunner upside down by his or her ankles is also a valid way to make an out, provided the baserunner is under age 12 or is married to the fielder.  Nothing in these laws should be construed to discourage tickling, either by the fielder or the runner.  Similarly, blocking, dragging, holding hands, doing somersaults, leaping, diving, and crying as a ruse are all valid ways of making or avoiding an out.

9.  Scoring a Run: Congratulations!  Now get out and field.

10.  Batting Order: If there are enough players to form teams, the teams can decide their own batting orders.  (As a side note, teams MUST pick a name before coming up to bat.  Traditionally the two youngest players compromise on the name; such a compromise usually consists of combining the favorite animal/color/natural disaster/mythical creature/disgusting bodily fluid of each one.)  If we play work-up, then we bat youngest to oldest, with the standing exception that a newcomer gets to bat immediately.

11.  Finishing the Game: A game is completed when one of the following conditions is met: A. It’s dark out.  B. We’re out of soda (does not necessarily end the game but usually will at least provide the opportunity for a Seventh Inning Stretch).  C. We have lost all the balls and/or broken all the bats.  D. Dinner is ready.

M's, A's Pitchers Meet at High Noon on Main Street

SEATTLE--Sport, at its finest, allows us to sample the greater emotions not usually found in our quotidian lives, to order off the children's menu the feelings of pride, nobility, heartache, and despair.  Nowhere, I believe, are these emotions more finely threaded than in a true Pitchers' Duel, decided by one run: our man against all of theirs, their man against all of ours.  Baseball is a team sport and yet a battle of individuals, and in such a Duel as transposed last night in the rain-washed yard of SafeCo field, the two pitchers stood in and delivered.

Felix Hernandez was recently presented with Cy Young's old trophy by the American League, more recently presented with a Loss by the Kansas City Royals with a matching set of 6 hits and 2 ERs over 5 innings.  Felix fits his name on the mound, he is expansive in body and spirit.  He mutters in frustration when a close ball is called against him, he shares a laugh with the catcher in conference, he covers first, he pumps his fist to see his teammates make a saving play in the infield.  He is broad-shouldered, with a bad haircut and scruff under his chin.  I can picture him--if he were not throwing elusive, freight-train-like pitches past spectating Oakland batters--working in an auto shop or putting together airplanes with the same mix of seriousness, exuberance, and commitment to excellence.  Last night, every mechanism of his pitching rhythm was in gear; he struck out eight.  He inspired his teammates to sharp defense behind him, highlighted by a double play on a sharp line to Figgins outing Sweeny, then throwing to first to stomp out Willingham and his lead-off single.  When Felix walked off the field for the last time, the Seattle crowd stood on its feet, able to recognize Good Baseball when they see it, and the King humbly ducked and touched his cap.

Brandon McCarthy, after missing all of last season with an injury, appears more tightly controlled than Felix.  His jaw is set, his motion to the plate is lean, economical, and spare.  His expression is intense and unchanging.  He methodically struck out six last night, and like Felix, his infield sprang into defense behind him, turning a classic 6-4-3 double play, catching Peguero trying to steal, catching pop fouls to convert them into outs.  McCarthy was disciplined, only allowing a single walk, and facing just two batters over the minimum.  If he had been in the Oakland Stadium, he too would have likely received a standing O as he trod off the field.

In the end, it was a single swing of the bat, a single pitch from McCarthy in the Fourth, left up too high for First Baseman Kennedy; and Kennedy sent it up higher, up up and over the right field wall, and that pitch made all the difference in the game.  

Both men's lines are worth listing here:

FHernandez, 7.2IP, 4H, 0R, 0ER, 8K, 3BB, W

BMcCarthy, 8IP, 3H, 1R, 1ER, 6K, 1BB, L

Stand Up When You Sing

This is intended for all my friends, goodhearted as they may be, who just don't care for baseball. So I would ask all of them to please, take a moment to stop punching your own mother, extinguish your American flags, and put down your copies of the Little Red Book, before you read on. Frankly, I find myself trying to convince these friends to like baseball, which is like trying to convince someone to like steak, or convincing the pope that Martin Luther had a few good ideas.

Of course when I undertake to convince my Maoist friends of baseball's charms, I end up struggling to define what exactly it is that I love about baseball so much, and why it is that I love it. And of course, the more I try to put together a legal brief in support of the game, the more I realize that it's like trying to prove the existence of a sunset. But there are reasons I love baseball, reasons hard to spell out into black and white, but I'll give it a go:

Baseball is like taking a walk through your old neighborhood: sometimes, if you're lucky, there will be something--a window pane, the light through the trees, the smell of mowed lawns and hot asphalt, something--that will remind you of when you were a kid. Sometimes all you'll see is how much everything's changed.  


Baseball is like playing a good game of chess with your dad. You sit through everything, all the pawn moves, watching him spinning his wedding ring while he thinks, listening to the tock-tock of the old clock, slowly advancing your pieces. All for that one move when his eyes flick up to yours and he smiles, genuinely, and says, "Shit, I didn't see that." And you offer to let him take his last move back and he doesn't. Then he still beats you.

Baseball is me, six years old, sitting on the living room floor; even at that age I understand that Fenway Park is the bright burning heart of a neighborhood, the hearth for an entire city. Baseball is a six-year-old seeing but not fully understanding the contrast between Bill Buckner's downcast shame and the Mets celebrating in a writhing mass on the field.

Baseball is like watching a rocket launch. You can wait all day for that but, boy, you better not miss it.

Sometimes baseball is like going to a casino: the lights are bright, everyone is sweaty, and all they're after is your money. But sometimes, baseball is like going to church, the same church you went to your whole life and your parents too. Maybe you don't quite understand everything that is going on in front of you; maybe you can't, maybe you never will and should stop trying. But if you pay attention and believe for just a little while, it can send your heart soaring. Plus you should stand up when you sing.

To Cure What Ails You

SALEM--Spring training started yesterday.  Not the sunny one down in Southern Southizona, with the charming man-boy millionaires of summer jogging in mesh jerseys.  Spring training started yesterday in my back yard.

It started when I came home from work all of a funk.  Too many hours in front of a computer screen, too many days of wearing a tie, too many evenings in a very fine recliner.  Despite my poor patient wife’s ministrations I was irreconcilable.

I have learned in my years that there is a certain simple joy to be found in the essential tasks of sport: a clean dive into a chilly pool, the union of a receiver with a tightly spiraling football, the neatly described arc of a 21-foot bank shot; but the triumph of them all is a well timed reversal of a pitched ball just over the heads of the infield.

This will cure what ails you.

My wife is the Commissioner of this league tonight; she drafted me, the 8-year-old, the 4-year-old, and the baby, who I put in an oversized stocking cap, propped up in the stroller, and instructed her to call my balls and strikes.  (Her zone was a little narrow, but it’s early on in the season.)  The wife drafted us straight out to the back yard so she could get dinner finished without my grumbling wrecking up the flavor.

The 8-year-old, he comes from the left side, with a duck-toed stance and a dangerous bat for anything I left up too high.  The 4-year-old is a rookie right-hander with a close stance, a fat bat, and a pair of Oshkosh overalls.

I pitched—from the stretch, and fielded the zingers both of them tapped all the way back to my long-suffering neighbor’s fence.  Those two whopped good long hits, even for the little guy; and they scrambled around the tree and back to the wall, which our ground rules state is a single and a home run all in one if you can make it back to the wall without me throwing the ball at you.  (I’ll admit I went all out to tater the 8-year-old, but missed mostly, and only half-stepped it after the 4-year-old’s grounders.)

The 8-year-old cracked one of the hard plastic wiffle balls almost all the way around, proud when I showed it to him nearly bisected into hemispheres.  The 4-year-old mostly wanted to wear the batter’s helmet, kept it on even in the field a la John Olerud.  Mrs. Commish came out to let us know dinner was ready, and to watch the rookie sensation hit.

We tromped inside.  My midwinter blues had dissipated amidst the sharp cold air and the sharply batted balls and the boys’ heels turned up speeding along the base paths.  Here is another thing I’ve learned in my years.  Here is something better than a clean catch or a square hit, here is a subtle joy pieced together bit by bit, not unlike the game itself: to watch your son strike a plastic curve ball, to see his knees twist and bend in the follow-through, his hand dismiss the bat, to see his small face upturned to follow his clean single through the chill blue air.

That will cure what ails you.

An Inkling of Spring

KEIZER--Driving down by the local ballpark with a few extra moments to spare this morning.   If Yankee Stadium is the St. Peter's of ballparks, then this is a strip-mall church-front.  Plenty of parking, blocky cement construction, and rather uncomfortable aluminum bleachers sloping lazily.

But it's all the same inside, right?  Without the banners from the local Painless Dentist's office, et al, hanging on the outfield fence, I can see the elements of this homely park patterned together to make a ball field: the mathematically precise corner at home base; the pitcher's hill sixty and one half feet away; the flag pole, empty today, upright next to the scoreboard; the short porch in left field with a picnic slope behind it; the on-deck circles and the casual, unfenced bullpens along the foul lines.

There is plenty going on in the world today: riots in Egypt are toppling the world's oldest country, the first twenty-five miles of road is paved in South Sudan, the world's newest country.  Earthquake refugees homeless in their homeland in Haiti, a congresswoman in hospital, shot, while I imagine her cold-hearted, pallid assailant languishes in the pink stripes usually reserved for captured Mexican immigrants.

And though its permanence doesn't fix any of those things, the ball field doesn't change.  Still ninety feet to first.  Still a loose-armed swing of the batter warming up as he looks down to the pitcher and reads the infield.  Still a cheerful hum from the stands, a pattern of licorice and popcorn sold, shirt numbers called over the loudspeaker, batters cheered.  All together, a soft summer sound like the breeze in the trees or a brook over stones.  I can hear it in the memory of my ears.

The world is not perfect today.  Baseball will never be as important as riots, infrastructure, or earthquakes.  Indeed, there is a strong argument to be made that sport is unimportant, petty, a simple diversion for the little-minded.  But here at the ball park, the lines will be precise, the measurements on the outfield walls exact, the chalk lines bright and square.  The umpires will be just and impartial.  The grass will be bristling and full green, the lights will come on, children will clap and smile, players will dream of bigger things and bigger parks.  The world will be no more perfect tomorrow, though perhaps this ball park, and a hundred others—school yards to Camden Yards—can encircle some small spheres of near-perfection in the midst of it all, just for a few hours at a time.

This morning was cold and bright, a sunny anomaly that we Northwesterners recognize as a false prophet of summer, a week of pseudo-spring that belies the rainy months yet to come.  The field was still patchy and yellowy-green, the infield dirt was crumbly and pitted.  The parking lot was empty.  The digital billboard blasted ads for an upcoming RV show.

But.  But the sky is blue, the sun is shining (coldly yet) on the grass, and pitchers and catchers report in two weeks.