Sports Writing

Incidentally, about the alteration to the Singapore Sox Fan look - been doing some webdesign work, and was inspired to change SSF to make it look cleaner. Plus, I like drop caps. (Yes, those of you that read both this and my main blog will notice that one’s also changed its look.)

Brilliant, economical start by Schilling: 8 innings pitched, 1 run, Ichiro looking silly. Gotta say, you don’t often see Ichiro swing and miss like that, but there it was, Curtis Montague Schilling and Jonathan “The R Stands For RogerClemensRedux” Papelbon striking him out swinging. (Okay, that was typical Boston hyperbole, but I can’t remember what the R really stands for.)

Do I really want to talk about Wells and Clement’s starts?

Meanwhile, what sweeter way to kick off the home opener than a David Ortiz contract extension? ‘‘I feel this is my house, and I’ve got to protect this house," said Ortiz, who turned 30 during an offseason that put the team and fan base through a lot. ‘‘This is not all about David Ortiz. This is about the group of guys that play together day by day. Whenever something happens to any of these guys, the whole Nation feels that.

On the Sox being ’leaders’ in chewing tobacco… while I think it can be a pretty disgusting habit, these calls to ban it in the game “for the kids” seem a bit over the top:

Schilling seems solid, and this whole “Timlin in the 8th, Papelbon in the 9th” thing is really growing on me. ‘Twas the Rangers game redux, except this time the baserunning errors came from the Sox. (He’s Crisp… but not that crisp, apparently.) It even had another solid defensive move from Manny. So all’s well that ends well. And with Jonathan R. Paplebon on the mound, I’m feeling confident about that ending-well thing. (Yeah, I’m a Sox fan… 2 solid games closing and I’m over the moon.)

Oriole haplessness is nice to see - 4 runs on 1 hit (and that a bunt single) in the first inning, and the Sox were cruising most of the way…

Meanwhile, I haven’t had the chance to watch today’s games or the chance to digest things fully, but looks like Beckett was smooth, glad for Arroyo hitting his homer in Cincy, and hey, this excerpt by Nate Silver on clutch hitting was an interesting read. As I’ve argued elsewhere, studies on whether clutch hitting exists tend to divide game situations into clutch/non-clutch, but really, to study it properly requires studying a whole spectrum of possible “key” moments, each varying in the level of ‘clutchness’. As Silver notes:

The only real consolation out of all this is I have Brad Wilkerson on my fantasy baseball team. The knuckler wasn’t doing its job (I don’t blame Bard for the passed balls).

It’s actually pretty shocking to find a post on baseball by someone else in Singapore. Okay, so it’s by John Holbo, transplanted American, but still. Anyway, he points out a letter in the National Review that claims day games are politically incorrect. Which amused me - as I noted, reverie for the good old prelapsarian days of baseball is probably almost as old as baseball itself, and is silly enough even without ascribing political slants to it. (Having said that, the Cat and Girl comic mentioned in the comments is pretty funny.)

Good Lord, Coco Crisp is fun to watch. Scoring from first on an Ortiz hit, and that catch that turned a potentially close finish into a harmless final inning.

Or, in the words of Molly Bloom: they want everything in their mouth all the pleasure those men get out of a woman I can feel his mouth O Lord I must stretch myself I wished he was here or somebody to let myself go with and come again like that I feel all fire inside me or if I could dream it when he made me spend the 2nd time tickling me behind with his finger I was coming for about 5 minutes with my legs round him I had to hug him after O Lord I wanted to shout out all sorts of things fuck or shit or anything at all only not to look ugly or those lines from the strain who knows the way hed take it you want to feel your way with a man theyre not all like him thank God some of them want you to be so nice about it I noticed the contrast he does it and doesnt talk I gave my eyes that look with my hair a bit loose from the tumbling and my tongue between my lips up to him the savage brute Thursday Friday one Saturday two Sunday three O Lord I cant wait till Monday

Apparently, Kevin Millar is going to be the emergency catcher for the Orioles (he was the Marlins’ emergency catcher from 1998-2002, but never played the position). Which fits in nicely with his image of the role:

Y’know, it’s funny - I think of Manny as Mr Zen, sometimes in a world of his own, but never really seeming flustered. But apparently good pal Julian Tavarez occasionally likes to go cuckoobananas. This is worrying.

This is awesome - big Choi fan. Dan Wheeler will attest to his sweet swing. Perhaps not a good swing for Chavez Ravine, but it should work for the lefty at Fenway. That, and he has a good eye. Man, I like the thought of Choi at first more than Youks or Snow.

Was reading Jayson Stark’s piece on Ryan Zimmerman being the first major leaguer in years (since Pete In-a-gadda-da-vida Incaviglia) to become a regular starter the season after he was drafted. (Well, barring injury, of course.) Which made me think of John Olerud, and how until he played for the PawSox last year he’d never played in the minors. So I looked him up, and found that Olerud is Dale Sveum’s cousin. Hmm. Random trivia I never knew.

I’ve always been happy to see Bronson Arroyo on the Sox, for complete non-baseball reasons. For one, he shares my birthday. For another, he’s fond of playing 90s alt-rock songs on the guitar, and one of the first songs I learnt to play on the guitar was the Stone Temple Pilots’ “Plush”.

Congrats to Japan on winning the WBC. Rules need to be adjusted, methinks: would’ve been nicer for Japan to play the DR and Korea to play Cuba in the semis - what was the point of winning the pool only to stay within the pool. And it seems weird that a team that lost 3 times (albeit once on a dubious biased call) won the whole thing.

Off the Florida Keys, a guy puts on a hitting show… Coco Crisp went 0 for 3 but is hitting .500 (8 for 16). In his first at-bat he took a huge cut and came up empty, with his feet well out of the box, a la Ichiro Suzuki. ‘‘It wasn’t no Ichiro," Crisp said. ‘‘It was a Cocomo."

I am not, as it turns out, in New York. For the last couple of days I’ve been sitting inside a hospital waiting room, hoping for the best as my mother gets a kidney transplant. (The link’s to the more complete story in my main blog.)