Apparently rain delays are not inherently evil

Tag : Rain Hats

If there has to be a rain delay that’s something like 2 hourslong, and the game has to crawl on until 1 am, the worst thing thatcan happen is that your team loses. The second worst thing that canhappen is that the game goes to extra innings, thus sendingeveryone left at the park screaming down into an abyss of‘holy cats it is after 1 am’ despair.
The Tigers narrowly missed both these potentials for Massive Woe,tying things up in the 8th and managing to silence the Cards in the9th, despite the fact that the game had been yo-yo-ing back andforth all night long. The bottom of the 9th was of courseimportant. I will admit to squealing gleefully when Clete doubled,and the relief I felt when Sheff hit his walk-off single (’weare not going to extras!!!’ relief) was almost a palpablething. But it was the scoreless, hitless top of the 9th that Ireckon really saved our tiger-striped butts, because theback-and-forth was definitely feeling like it was going to kill us.This is where it would normally be fitting to salute Todd Jones,who pitched that 9th, and didn’t get a save, but DID gethimself a win.
HOWEVER.
Todd Jones tonight earned himself a hearty salute for mattersunrelated to his pitching and totally related to his AWESOMENESS.Because, you see, Todd Jones appreciates the fans. This may seemlike a small thing, or it may seem like a ‘duh’ thing,but in a league full of overpaid manchildren who wouldn’trecognize their own massive privilege if it danced naked for themwith colorful graphs detailing its existence in the background, itkind of IS a big deal. In this case, Todd Jones’ appreciationof the fans took the form of rain delay entertainment.
Because, see, Jonesy understands that a rain delay is BORING forthe fans, and that baseball is ENTERTAINMENT. So duringtonight’s rain delay, Jonesy started passing out sunflowerseeds, chucking the packets into the crowd. After a while of that,he went into the dugout, got one of those give-away hats with thefake Magglio hair coming out the back, put on one ofMagglio’s jerseys, and went out onto the tarp, theatricallyreenacting Magglio’s game-winning 2006 ALCS homer, completewith at-bat routine, swing, fist pump, and invisible third basecoach hand slap. He improvised a slide into home, though.
The fans were not the only ones amused by this: FSN kept showingthe Tigers’ dugout, where players were cracking up (althoughArrrrmando was standing there looking vaguely puzzled by the wholething) and one of them (Miner? I can’t remember exactly) hada mini video camera out and was filming it. If only all rain delayscould be so glorious.
The real question here, though, is how in the world did Jonesy fitinto Magglio’s jersey? Are baseball jerseys just so forgivinga garment that they’re basically interchangeable? Verycurious.
The offense in this one was also happy-making, as loads of guys hada multi-hit outing, and two Tigers (Sheff and Guillen) had 4 hitson the night. It was also nice to have a kind of sucky game fromthe pitching (Jonesy excepted) and win anyways– that, afterall, is what we were SUPPOSED to be able to do this season.
The worst thing about the day didn’t even happen in the game.Brandon Inge is on the DL with his busted oblique. INSERT GIANTSADFACE HERE. I know it had still been bothering him, but we allthought it was getting better and was at a low enough level toallow him to play through it. Apparently he managed to aggravate itto the point where this was no longer true. His explanation of justHOW he managed to aggravate it to that point is… well….see for yourself:
“I’ll be honest with you, I wasn’t going to sayanything,” Inge began.
It turns out, as Inge explained Wednesday, his 3-year-old son Tyler— actually, Tyler’s pillow — is to blame for thelatest, and most serious, aggravation to the muscles underneath theleft side of his ribcage.
Late Monday night, with Tyler sleeping between Inge and his wife,Shani, Inge made a fateful decision.
“His head was propped up in the middle of the night so I wastrying to push the pillow down behind him,” Inge said.“I got up on one elbow and I pushed that pillow down —oh my God, I about jumped out of the bed. My wife’s like,‘What’s going on?’ … (Tyler) didn’teven wake up.
“It’s pretty swollen right now. A piece of cartilagekind of tore out from under (my ribs). … It’s almostlike a sharp, lightning pain through your body.”
Mlive.com/Graham Couch article
Brandon. Seriously? Sigh.
Dane Sardinha is up, which is so underwhelming that I can’teven muster enough of a whelm to do more than mention the simplefact of it. He’s like the Ultimate AAAA Backup Catcher.
Random note: Big League Stew is running little profiles of all the major league parks thisseason, and they just did Comerica . You will recognize a couple of the photos and I am sadlyresponsible for a number of the quotes in the article (also quotedare Ian and Billfer ). It’s pretty good stuff, even though his Fun Fact–“When the Tigers hit a homer, the two cats atop thescoreboard roar and shoot water”– isn’t quitetrue. I wish it WAS true… what we need in the ballpark aremore things that call to mind HAIRBALLS.
Tomorrow Nate and his goofy, goofy facial hair goes up against ToddWellemeyer and his goofy, goofy scalp hair. It’s at 1 pm EDT,so plot your productivity accordingly.