Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Baseball Baseball Baseball

I apologize, dear readers, for being somewhat absent. I have been in a baseball haze where my thoughts have centered around the batting title, Cy Young award, and the pennant race. I have tried to refrain from intaking too much alcohol, and I did well until Monday when Dean and I went to the game with friends of ours from college who doubled as designated drivers.

Over the weekend we watched the Twins flounder against the Yankees. And I got violent feelings towards Derek Jeter with his smugness and his fake comaraderie with Joe Mauer, both competing for the batting title. I think since Baby Jesus has been in a serious slump, he has since relinquished the lead. But I've been too discouraged to check for sure.

Saturday Dean and I went to the Rays game to get the Dewayne Staats/Joe Magrane dual bobblehead. They are the FSN announcers for the Rays and the bobblehead has them both seated at a desk. And they talk! It's very neat but the kitties are scared of it. We ate at the posh stadium restaurant out in left field and returned to our seats just in time to see the FIRST TRIPLE PLAY EVER TURNED AT TROPICANA FIELD. It was very cool. It was only the second in Rays history and the first 2-6-2 triple play in MLB history. After half the game Dean and got bored so we wandered around the stadium. We discovered a free game room we hadn't seen before that had several couches and video game systems. While all the kids were taking turns and crowding around the PS2 and XBox systems, Dean and I had an absolute blast playing RBI baseball on an old Nintendo. We felt ancient and the the kids couldn't understand what we could possibly find amusing about the poor graphics and players they had never heard of. Oh well.

Monday the Twins started their series agauinst the Rays. It was a pitchers dual that never should have happened. Boof looked great (he had lots of fans since he is from St. Petersburg) but our offense should not have struggled against the Rays. Our two runs came from a Rondell White homer. Go figure. At least we won. Like I mentioned above, our two friends who got married last summer and moved to Orlando drove over to go to the game with us and we had a fun time reminiscing about the good old days.

Yesterday evening we returned to the stadium to watch Johan Santana pitch. He was filthy. He pitched 8 shutout innings striking out 12. He made the batters look absolutely ridiculous. We happened to sit in the middle of the Venzuelan Santana fanclub. It was fantastic. They were waving flags and going beserk when he struck anyone out. I felt sort of bad that most of the crowd was Twins fans coming out to see Santana pitch. Normally when the Twins come to St. Petersburg it is much earlier in the season and much more laid back so that Dean and I either root for the Rays our keep our emotions in check. Not so last night. We hollared and jeered when Gardy got tossed and were on our feet when Mauer finally got a double. Sorry Rays, nothing personal, just pennant race baseball.

We won't be making the hour trek to see Silva pitch tonight. I think I have to return to my career and get some reading done. Not to mention save my energy for the rest of the home stretch.

4 comments:

Scott said...

I am with you 100 percent on Jeter. I've never liked the guy, and I'm not sure why. His smug little look just makes me want to strangle him. So I guess I do know why after all.

Anonymous said...

I have to disagree with you all about Jetter. I certainly don't like the Yankees, but into todays atmosphere of overpaid, big mouth players and their sense of entitlement( except the Twins players of course) I find him to be a good family man, His parents are always in the stands, his consistant desire to win and still enjoy the game and his love of the game!!!! He has never been involved in any scandals and the only negative I find in him is that he plays for the Yankees! I'd love to have him on the twins team!!!!

Anonymous said...

anonymous, you're not fooling me, i know who you are, i can read you like a cheap novel!

Natalie said...

scott~
And he plays for your biggest rivals, right?

lefty~
It means we're picking up and moving to StL?

rg~
Rays spanked us last night. Go Rays, I guess. Twins still up by 0.5, all good. No, I didn't see the no-hitter. We turned it to the Sunshine network right after when he was freaking out, and I said, "What the heck is THAT guy so happy about?" Then Dean told me and I felt stupid. Very cool though.

anon~
I guess what everyone here has in common is we hate Jeter mostly cuz he plays for the Yanks, but no one would hate it if he were on THEIR team. It could be argued that ARod shares those traits too, and even Yankees fans dislike him (I don't know why though, I disagree with them on that). I wouldn't hate it if ARod played for us either.

mom~
When's the last time you read a cheap novel ;)