JSngry

Don't remember this: Remember that after this, you still had just a man of first with one out. And then remember how you failed to execute with a man on first with one out. Man on first, one out...nothing to get amped about. Totally fucked umpire's call, yes. But man on first with one out? Totally routine. Learn to tell the difference and how to proceed accordingly. Must be part of that gettin' over the hump thang. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfGsTx3xtdI

Oh no, we couldn't have the World series actually cover the globe, that's CRAZY TALK!!!! As for Puhols, uh, Albert? How do like hitting in Arlington?

All the late-60s/early-70s Prestige "historical series" reissues had notes like this.

Y'all remember the New York City slack-jawed yoked who leaned over the fence and taunted Nellie during the LCS last year? Looks like he's got a ball-throwing jackwad brother in Arlington. Motherfucker - get the fuck out of The Ballpark and don't ever come back. Ignunt punkass bitch...

It hurts. But that's the way baseball go. It might be the most painful, but let's see how they play over the rest of the games. Win or lose, if this is the team I think they are, they'll gut it out until the end.

It finally dawned on me that...there's no other games being played this evening, haven't been for a week, and won't be for quite a while. And I'm still getting to watch a Texas Rangers game. Played live, not recorded! I know, that's obvious, but...the impending finality of the 2011 season within the next five days has finally sunk in. This game this evening is not a fun one to watch, and how many other games are left might not be fun to watch, but...I love this team, brain farts and all, over-achieving pitchers finally out of gas and all. Crazyass Texas flags everywhere and all. They don't quit, and other than winning (of which they've done plenty), what more can you ask? The Rangers might win 3 of their next four. Or they may not. Personally, I think the lack of fully-developed major league pitching has finally caught up with them. Whatever hump it is you have to get over to win a championship, keep on trying. I'm sticking with this team unless and until their collective character leaves them and doesn't come back.

No excuse. Same as that ball hitting the bag in Detroit. You get a bad break, you work out of it. The "mental toughness" of this team I've worried about all this season, in spite of all they've gotten through? This is why. They'll do some incredible stuff, but all at once have these lapses. It ain't pretty. Still plenty of baseball left, though, but damn...this is painful to watch.

Wow, this one is killer.

Other than McPhee (and even then only to a degree, and he was around long before the downtown scene), none of these players really matter to me in any way other than knowing that they're there and that they play well. I'm glad they're there and I'm glad that they're doing that, but..Don Byron? Really? There's just one too may layer of "detachment" to the whole thing for me...even when it's hot, it's not the type of hot that will burn your skin off, it's the type of hot that makes you look at yo0ur buddies and say "wow, that was hot!" and then go to the bar laughing about, yeah, that was hot! Of course that's just me, and what is important to me need not be important to you, and vice-versa, I'm just saying...if the downtown scene is important in any "universal" way, then...I'm not in that universe and don't really feel any need to be. To the degree that I still care about such things, I've got other muses to follow. And definitely did when I really did care about such things.

See, that's part of the deal right there...that whole "downtown" scene often produced work that was more important to itself than it was to anybody else. Which is not to say that it wasn't creative or interesting, or any of that, it quite often was. It just...referenced and related to itself more than it did anything else, or so it seemed. For this to have been a "masterpiece"...again I ask - to who? Maybe that's "provincialism" on my part, but when I heard, say, the AACM, I didn't hear a "Chicago scene" nearly as much as I heard music being re-birthed in response to the imperatives of what "we as a people" now knew to be true. The "Chicago factor" was in there, but it wasn't the primary indicator, not at all. Never really got that out of the "downtown" scene. Or maybe what I did hear didn't compel me enough to dig deeper. A lot of fine players, but their POV is not always conducive to producing "universal revelations", if you know what I mean. Zorn is a prime example. I've heard lots of his work, and enjoyed lots of it as well. But he never really seems to me to be "transcending" as much as he does "regional". Even New York City can be "regional", ya' know? Then again, when there really ain't no road bands, this might well be the way it has to go. Not my preference, but fewer and fewer things are these days. We'll all live, no doubt.

The two men, they are a-lookin' at each other, they are!

Terese Munselle?

Woman in mini-skirt!

Cyrkular Neon!

Blue. Neon. Touch Me.

Whitaker & Trammell are the names that always come to mind when I watch those two play...they really do play like they're brothers, and both being young and a little "goofy" (each in their own way) just adds to the fun. Here's to hoping it can last... About Ian's offense, when his BA get depressed and stayed depressed, many (including myself) were wondering WTF was wrong with this guy, how do we get him out of it, is he good trade-bait, etc. It was then that a few SABR-metric heads on Lone Star Ball (still a lurker, forever a lurker!) more or stood up and said SIT DOWN & STFU, Ian Kinsler is having a career year, quite possibly the best year of anybody on the team. and then they broke it down, showed all the peripheral, and damned if they weren't right. It's not just the power, it's the OBP, the ability to score once on, and some other stats I'm not really able to get my head all the way around but which make sense when explained. So yeah, as one guy put it on MLB Network, Ian Kinsler is very quietly one of the best second basemen in baseball today. I know I like him!

Actually, the Giants were up 2-0 coming back to TX, the Rangers won game 3, and that was the last game they won all season. While I don't think the Cards will sweep the Rangers at home (although it could happen), I don't see them losing this series in TX either (if at all). The Rangers bats in 2011 are no louder than they were in 2010. Hopefully the return of the DH rule for the games in TX helps, but uh.... who the hell they gonna designate to hit when freakin' NOBODY is hitting???? Yeah, that's right...I thought I bought my ticket to Game 5 after the last out of Game 4, but I guess it was Game 3. Whenever good bats "go cold", I tend to look at who's pitching &  how. Hadn't really seen Jaime Garcia until last night, but he was outstanding. Full props to him for that. But I was able to relax (ok, "relax") around the 6th when it dawned on me (thanks to Quincy's Corollary) that Cards fans were no doubt having the same reactions in their half-innings as I was in mine. Both starters were in great form last night. The Inner Colby Lewis is always a pleasure to watch, and it has been far too long since he's come to work. But the Inner Jaime Garcia is pretty badass his ownself. The thing I'm looking at is this - the surest way to stop the Rangers this season has been to throw them an unfamiliar pitcher with good stuff. But - the more they see a guy, the better they get against him. True for most teams, but with no real weak spots in the order, when one starts to get a guy figured out, there's usually some sort of domino effect. Not to say that I'm expecting this to happen, just that if there's cause to be optimistic about the offense awakening the next time we see Carpenter (still not convinced but that he's not "gingery") & Garcia. A serious tempering to that optimism - The Ballpark's offensive generosity is not team-specific, so Harrison, Holland, & CJ are going to need to be on their best behavior. I'm not putting any money on that happening... Realistically, the Run Differential going into Game 3 is zero. 0! So although the Rangers' bats have been kept relatively quiet, so have the Cards. And the only HR to this point has been Napoli's. Just sayin', it's still very much anybody's series. EDIT to add - the best part of the DH is not having to see Michael young play defense. Love the guy, and his more vocal critics overstate their case by quite a bit, but I swear to god, if Mitch (or even Napoli, probably/maybe) had been at first instead of Michael last night, the Ogando/Green match-up never happens, that inning is over right there.

Megan responds! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_VgKsovUW4&NR=1

Count-icality!

The John Handy items bite (and painfully), but the Sonny Criss sides....they are very "well done for what they are", Criss plays excellently, very soulfully (did he ever not?) & the arrangements do not get in his way. At times they might even aid him in getting into the material. Recommended, actually, but with the caveat that these should in no way be approached as "straight ahead" jazz, and if you don't like "marketplace jazz" (although one could make the argument that all recorded music is "marketplace music" in some form or fashion...), the stop before you get started.

Gale Gordon it is!

Ya' know? The "media narrative" for this series seems to be LaRussa vs The Rangers' Big Bats. The media loves them some narrative, and the media will stick to that narrative because it's easier doing that than it is to actually learn how to watch a game instead of a "drama". I'll tell you this much, though - those two, Andrus & Kinsler, have been a delight all season long. That barehanded grab that Ian took off of Elvis' feed? Not the first time this year we've seen that. Their teamwork has been nothing short of superb all season, but I don't know that anybody outside of the the real baseball heads in the Metroplex is really "getting" it. People see that Elvis has made waaaaay to many errors this year and stop there, but I've seen those errors, and they are almost all errors of carelessness, of inattentiveness. Certainly not of ineptitude. And he's made more great plays than he has muffed easy ones. In spite of that, watching the Andrus-Kinsler combo in action is like watching a couple of kids, twins, even, except at a professional level. They're almost always in sync with each other, and there's smiles aplenty. Good SS/2B teams are one of the finer things in the game, they just usually don't make for good dramatic narratives. Rhodes, remember, started the season with the Rangers, and was finally cut due to wanton ineffectiveness.

No, remember, there is a connection to Vivian Vance...maybe she looked for a job at his employment agency...

No...but you're maybe Mertz banked with him at some point...