bring the pain hardcore to the BRAIN.
petitio: Let us not discuss what you would do to have had Kevin Brown in his prime pitching for Texas.
ghostrunner: :|
ghostrunner: Many many terrible awful degrading things.
***
A's are beating Baltimore, 9-0, in Camden Yards. Tim Hudson has been pretty motherfucking dominant, throwing at 93MPH in the seventh, showing off his shiny new cutter that does funny things when left-handed batters are in the box.
The Orioles have four hits through six, two of which were promptly eliminated through DPs, and, well, they have not left very many men on base because they have not been getting anybody on the damn things. Hudson hasn't walked anybody; the Orioles aren't hitting anything. The Baltimore pen, which has been propping their shaky rotation up all season long, gives it up to the tune of six runs in the sixth, and it is sort of a sign of the futility of the night when Jerry Hairston, the Baltimore centerfielder, goes back and back and back on a flyball, and it looks like he's going to catch it because his glove is out and he is in the right place and the last ball got hit to deep to the warning --
but no, the ball goes over the fence, and Hairston comes down, clutching his calf.
He tries to walk it off like a man, but after four or five steps, he folds over and is kinda staring down at the grass in center field. Gibbons and Surhoff come jogging in to see to him. Gibbons talks to Hairston; Surhoff pats his centerfielder on the back, then takes his cap off and looks out along the grass to wait for the trainer to arrive. The camera shows Surhoff, Hairston, and Gibbons from about the left field foul pole, and you can see how thin Surhoff's hair is on the top when he takes his cap off and before he puts it back on again.
Surhoff got traded away in 2000 and cried, apparently, because his autistic son had to leave the therapy program he was attending at Johns Hopkins. When the Baltimore Sun interviewed Mike Mussina about it later that year, he said something to the ilk of it being a crying shame and embarassment to the game that they would do that to BJ -- fighting words, man, from Moose, the Remotest Pitcher on the Planet -- and he was gone the next year to a team that promised not to treat him that way and was willing to pay him $91 million as proof of their esteem.
Out of some kind of desire to make past wrongs aright, Baltimore signed Surhoff to a minor league contract last year. After a stint in AAA, he came and hit his way back into a starting job. I don't know if he broke camp with them this season, but Surhoff is hitting .332 in limited duty so far. He turned forty on August 4th, which is two weeks ago tomorrow; good old BJ is more likely than not back in Baltimore to finish his career.
Surhoff goes 0 for 3 tonight, and when they show him standing out in center field, next to an injured Hairston and a worried-looking Gibbons, he looks more than a little frail and old and tired. It hasn't been that hot in the Mid-Atlantic recently, what with the hurricane moving through, but the humidity is up to 91% tonight and every summer night in Baltimore.
Hairston, who has spent the whole of his career in Baltimore and is coming up on the grand old age of twenty eight and is primarily distinguished by finishing in the top six in sacrifice hits for the past three years running, has to be helped back to the dugout after the Oakland catcher finishes his home run trot around the bases.
I love Oakland, and I fucking adore Tim Hudson, but I also love Baltimore when I can remember to watch them: I have more than enough baseball teams to love, but I can't help loving the O's. They were the adopted team of the high school boyfriend who took me to my first baseball game ever and held my hand between innings and got embarassed when we got kicked out of the seats that we'd snuck into. They were the owners of the stadium that we used to drive past when we got lost on our way back from DC, and they were team that I saw the second-most when I started watching baseball for real -- New York played about twenty three games against them from the middle of July through to September last year.
Aaron Boone hit his first home run as a Yankee in Camden Yards, and I loved Brook Fordyce and Deivi Cruz and Jay Gibbons and BJ Surhoff last year, and yeah, I miss steamed crabs in humid weather. I miss being back on the Chesapeake. I miss crickets so loud that they keep you awake; I miss mockingbirds sitting in the big maple tree outside and calling at first dawn. I, goddammit, love Baltimore.
***
In less emo news -- and in connection to Mel H, slugging catcher -- happy birthday to the voiceover on the hottest Porsche commercial ever.
Moose v. Santana tomorrow. Mulder in Camden Yards.
ghostrunner: :|
ghostrunner: Many many terrible awful degrading things.
***
A's are beating Baltimore, 9-0, in Camden Yards. Tim Hudson has been pretty motherfucking dominant, throwing at 93MPH in the seventh, showing off his shiny new cutter that does funny things when left-handed batters are in the box.
The Orioles have four hits through six, two of which were promptly eliminated through DPs, and, well, they have not left very many men on base because they have not been getting anybody on the damn things. Hudson hasn't walked anybody; the Orioles aren't hitting anything. The Baltimore pen, which has been propping their shaky rotation up all season long, gives it up to the tune of six runs in the sixth, and it is sort of a sign of the futility of the night when Jerry Hairston, the Baltimore centerfielder, goes back and back and back on a flyball, and it looks like he's going to catch it because his glove is out and he is in the right place and the last ball got hit to deep to the warning --
but no, the ball goes over the fence, and Hairston comes down, clutching his calf.
He tries to walk it off like a man, but after four or five steps, he folds over and is kinda staring down at the grass in center field. Gibbons and Surhoff come jogging in to see to him. Gibbons talks to Hairston; Surhoff pats his centerfielder on the back, then takes his cap off and looks out along the grass to wait for the trainer to arrive. The camera shows Surhoff, Hairston, and Gibbons from about the left field foul pole, and you can see how thin Surhoff's hair is on the top when he takes his cap off and before he puts it back on again.
Surhoff got traded away in 2000 and cried, apparently, because his autistic son had to leave the therapy program he was attending at Johns Hopkins. When the Baltimore Sun interviewed Mike Mussina about it later that year, he said something to the ilk of it being a crying shame and embarassment to the game that they would do that to BJ -- fighting words, man, from Moose, the Remotest Pitcher on the Planet -- and he was gone the next year to a team that promised not to treat him that way and was willing to pay him $91 million as proof of their esteem.
Out of some kind of desire to make past wrongs aright, Baltimore signed Surhoff to a minor league contract last year. After a stint in AAA, he came and hit his way back into a starting job. I don't know if he broke camp with them this season, but Surhoff is hitting .332 in limited duty so far. He turned forty on August 4th, which is two weeks ago tomorrow; good old BJ is more likely than not back in Baltimore to finish his career.
Surhoff goes 0 for 3 tonight, and when they show him standing out in center field, next to an injured Hairston and a worried-looking Gibbons, he looks more than a little frail and old and tired. It hasn't been that hot in the Mid-Atlantic recently, what with the hurricane moving through, but the humidity is up to 91% tonight and every summer night in Baltimore.
Hairston, who has spent the whole of his career in Baltimore and is coming up on the grand old age of twenty eight and is primarily distinguished by finishing in the top six in sacrifice hits for the past three years running, has to be helped back to the dugout after the Oakland catcher finishes his home run trot around the bases.
I love Oakland, and I fucking adore Tim Hudson, but I also love Baltimore when I can remember to watch them: I have more than enough baseball teams to love, but I can't help loving the O's. They were the adopted team of the high school boyfriend who took me to my first baseball game ever and held my hand between innings and got embarassed when we got kicked out of the seats that we'd snuck into. They were the owners of the stadium that we used to drive past when we got lost on our way back from DC, and they were team that I saw the second-most when I started watching baseball for real -- New York played about twenty three games against them from the middle of July through to September last year.
Aaron Boone hit his first home run as a Yankee in Camden Yards, and I loved Brook Fordyce and Deivi Cruz and Jay Gibbons and BJ Surhoff last year, and yeah, I miss steamed crabs in humid weather. I miss being back on the Chesapeake. I miss crickets so loud that they keep you awake; I miss mockingbirds sitting in the big maple tree outside and calling at first dawn. I, goddammit, love Baltimore.
***
In less emo news -- and in connection to Mel H, slugging catcher -- happy birthday to the voiceover on the hottest Porsche commercial ever.
Moose v. Santana tomorrow. Mulder in Camden Yards.