Curse of the Squirrel

Round one of the MLB playoffs is out of the way and so is a combined 370 million dollars in payroll between the Yankees and the Phillies, the teams with the top payrolls in both the AL and the NL.

I was on the road for a couple of the 5^th games of the divisional series and watched from a hotel room and heard on the car radio. All three of the final games were interesting and exciting for a baseball fan.

The Brewers and Diamondbacks game featured one of the best postseason catches in history in the 7^th inning by the D’Back’s Chris Young in centerfield, who coincidentally wears #24, the same as Willie Mays. Young made a run-saving, back-to-the-plate running, stretching catch that was simply better than the one Mays made in the 54 series against the Indians. At the time the game was 1-1 with a Brewer standing on second base.
Unfortunately for the Diamondbacks ace pitcher Ian Kennedy, he then paid Young back by hanging a fastball and a bloop single scored the run anyway.
But the Brewers closer, Jon Axford, who hadn’t blown a save since April then blew one in the 9^th to send the game to extra innings.
In the 10^th there was some déjà-vu. The Brewers Carlos Gomez stood at second base and scored the game winning run on a Nyjier Morgan single, scoring as he had for the Twins in a one-game playoff a few years ago that helped the Twins advance to the playoffs.

In Philadelphia good friends Roy Halladay and Chris Carpenter faced off in a great pitching duel won by Carpenter and the Cards on a 3-hit shutout. The Cards scored their run with their first two batters and Carpenter shut it down the entire way. Credit Cardinal manager Tony Larussa for not trying to fix what wasn’t broken and leaving Carpenter in to finish what he started.
This game featured a little déjà-vu also as the Phil’s Ryan Howard made the team’s season-ending out for the second year in a row. Howard added injury to insult this time as he ruptured his Achilles tendon trying to get out of the batter’s box and he’ll require surgery that will most likely keep him out of the Phil’s lineup for the first couple of months of the season. I have a feeling it will be longer than though. I had an Achilles issue in my 20’s and it was a couple of years before it felt right again.
The Phillies’ fans have a scapegoat, if they wish, and it’s not Ryan Howard…it’s squirrels. In the 4^th game in St. Louis, which they lost, a squirrel ran across home plate while the Phil’s Roy Oswalt was pitching. Prior to game five, in Philadelphia, groundskeepers had to chase down and remove yet another squirrel.
I believe that it was the exact same squirrel which was brought to Philadelphia by the Cardinals in order to get in to the heads of the Phillies. And it worked; the Phillies lost because of a squirrel!

 

The Yankees went down weakly in the Bronx with the heart of their batting order looking like minor leaguers in the bottom of the 9^th needing one run to tie the game and keep them from advancing to the championship series. But Tiger reliever Jose Valverde, who was perfect in save situations all year, stayed perfect in post-season play too closing out this game by striking out Alex Rodriguez.

So those three game five winners joined the Texas Rangers who dispatched the Tampa Bay Rays in four games. The Rangers capped off their final game win with help from Adrian Beltre’s three-home run game.

I think the Rangers are now the favorite to win the World Series. They beat the Tigers in game one and now the Tigers are down two starting outfielders, Delmon Young and Magglio Ordonez. Young tweaked an oblique muscle in the Yankees series in which he hit three homeruns and Ordonez broke the foot which kept him from playing in most of the 2010 season.
The Rangers have 5 guys who hit over 20 homeruns and three of them hit over 30 so they can bomb a team for sure. With CJ Wilson their number one starter they don’t match up as well on the mound but it might not matter.
The Brewers beat the Cardinals in game one as their marquee players (Ryan Braun and Prince Fielder) both went deep in a 9-6 come-from-behind victory. I can’t see the Cardinals beating them but they did split the 18 games they played against each other this year. But since my predicting skills have been less than skillful don’t place any money on anything I have to say.

There is a new Showtime series called Homeland that I think is a winner. It aired its second episode last night following Dexter, which is still fantastic. Homeland is about a US Marine who was help captive in Afghanistan for 8 years and was rescued and returned to the states. A female CIA agent believes that he was turned by his captors while there and the “rescue” was facilitated by the terrorists so that they could send him back as a sleeper agent. Her superiors don’t believe her but she attempts to watch his every move nonetheless.

I’m not going to write more about TV shows right now since it would make it sound like that is all that I do. But to recap, I am currently watching Dexter, Homeland, Hung, Survivor, Raising Hope, Jersey Shore, Two and a Half Men, Whitney, Terra Nova, Fringe, Stossel, Baseball, Football and anything that involves politics (I have to get my share of horror shows in there, after all.)

The last couple of weeks have been tough for me without my doggie. Today was probably the first day that I noticed that I wasn’t looking for him around every corner. That, however, made me sad anyway. But for the most part I have come to terms with it. Aside from the fact that he had been with me for 15 years I am also bothered by the fact that I simply can’t just go get another dog right now. With times tough for me and no one else around the house to help take care of one when I am on the road it’s just not fair to try bring one home to fill some emptiness within me. So until such time as our times improve or my living situation changes I will have pet and play with other people’s doggies for a while.
Ok, that just made me sad again, so I’m…

Done.