And That Happened

Yankees 5, Twins 1: At the Reds game on Tuesday night, there was a trivia question on the board that went "name the four post-1900 pitchers whose last name started with the letter M and who notched 250+ wins." I got Maddux and Mathewson quickly, and after a few seconds I got Morris, but I'll be damned if I couldn't come up with Mussina before they flashed the answer on the board. Which is crazy, actually, considering that (a) he's active; (b) his team is on national TV all the damn time; and (c) he's having something of a renaissance a year after being left for dead, both by me and many others. Moose is 13-6 with a 3.26 ERA. He's got 263 career wins now, and for some reason he still seems to fly under the radar.

Brewers 3, Cardinals 0: CC Sabathia is doing his 1998 Randy Johnson impression, shutting out the cards on three hits over 106 pitches and lowering his post-trade ERA to 1.36. He's simply a beast. My dream matchup this year would be the Sunday, September 28th battle between the Cubs and Brewers with the teams tied for first place and Sabathia facing Zambrano for all of the marbles. Goosebumps, baby! Oh wait, it's almost certain that the loser of such a matchup would win the Wild Card anyway, and depending on how the first round pairings worked out, one team may decide to simply rest everyone, making it one of the most anticlimactic games of the year. DAMN YOU WILD CARD!!

Mets 6, Phillies 3: This is why I tend not to join in those freakout-fests along with everyone else following a game like Tuesday night's loss. The beautiful thing about baseball is that there are so many damn games that hardly a single one is important in and of itself. Big loss? Big deal! They suited up again 24 hours later, the Mets won, and all of the sound an fury in the press and the blogosphere on Wednesday is rendered moot. Query why everyone gets to worked up about thing like that in the first place. Those kinds of reactions should be limited to football where everyone sits around for a week with nothing to do except obsess about the last game. Football sucks, by the way.

Reds 9, Padres 5: I dunno, Greg. 350 is a nice round number. Maybe that's enough. Maybe you don't need these morons in the sand shirts to bring you down any longer. Maybe your career has been too spectacular for you to be expected to have to sit and sweat out another Cla Meredith outing, only to be forced to tell reporters that you don't want to throttle him and his bullpen buddies who keep leaving you with no-decisions. There's golf to be played. Pull a Schmidt and leave mid-season. It just ain't worth it.

Rays 4, A's 3: The A's walked one time in the game. Someone needs to talk to the hitters in this organization about the importance of the base on balls.

Tigers 7, Royals 1: I think that even the Royals fans were hoping that Detroit would put up a ten-spot in the eighth so that they'd get to see Tony Pena again.

White Sox 10, Rangers 8: It wasn't Everyday Eddie's day as Guardado -- with some help from his friends -- coughs up a four run lead late to give the pale hose the win.

Braves 9, Marlins 4: Atlanta beats the Marlins, but loses Chipper to a strained hammy and Hudson to elbow tightness. That sound you hear is Frank Wren finally realizing that it's over, reaching for his cell phone, and calling anyone who might be interested in Teixeira.

Rockies 5, Dodgers 3: Great Brian Fuentes quote regarding all of the trade rumors:

It's kind of like closing -- you've got to block out the external factors, the score, crowd, who's batting. When I'm out there, I don't think about those things. And when I'm not at the park, I'm not thinking about baseball.

If that's literally true -- if he's not thinking about the score or the batter on the mound and he doesn't think about baseball when he's not at the park -- doesn't that mean that he's never thinking about baseball?

Red Sox 6, Mariners 3: A day after Theo noted that, with respect to the bullpen, he was content to dance with the one what brung him, Boston's bullpen goes out puts up 6.2 innings of scoreless baseball. Slow and steady wins the race.

Pirates 8, Astros 7: That's no way to start that pennant run, Houston. Hmm, maybe they just need to trade for a few more veteran pitchers to really give a boost to that stretch run drive.

Cubs 10, Diamondbacks 6: Micah Owings came into a 4-3 game in the 8th inning, and left it 6-3 with the bases loaded. One Reed Johnson grand slam later and it was 10-3. Ladies and gentlemen, your first place Arizona Diamondbacks!

Giants 6, Nationals 4: Bengie Molina: "The beauty of the Western Division is that even though we've played so bad the last couple of weeks, we're still in it. Anything can happen. I've seen it before." Is it gonna happen? Nah. I just can't see it. But it would be perhaps the most awesomest thing ever if the Giants made a serious run at Arizona and L.A.. I think if that happened there would be serious talks about relegating the entire division to AAA in favor of the top five PCL teams or something.

Blue Jays 1, Orioles 1 [SUSPENDED]: I got suspended once. It happened after my buddy Brian Bailey and I thought it would be funny to sign up the VanDevender Jr. High School library up for a subscription to Playboy. I have no idea how we got busted. We only told like ten or twelve other 7th grade boys about it, and I'm sure none of them would have narced us out. I mean, we swore them to secrecy and everything.

Angels 14, Indians 11: Cleveland made the two point conversion but muffed the onside kick, so Phil Dawson never got the chance to tie it up and send it to sudden death. A shame, really.

OK, that kind of wisecrack about an Anaheim game usually causes commenter Daniel to pretend to be offended that I don't pay close attention his Angels. He may not say such a thing this time, however. At least not here, anyway, because Daniel has started his own blog. He's just getting started and it's not uncommon for original intentions to mutate into new things, but for now he's planning on it being mostly Angels' stuff. Daniel has been one of the most active commenters around here, and for keeping the conversations going like that, we should all throw some love his way. Click through and read a bit about how much he loves Howie Kendrick.