Baseball Toaster was unplugged on February 4, 2009.
"If these guys would have beat us again tonight easily, a lot of heads would have been hanging in the locker-room thinking, 'Do we have what it takes to beat these guys?"' said Matt Stairs of Fredericton, who scored three runs out of the leadoff spot. "It's a huge win."
(Toronto Sun)
Chien-Ming Wang vs. Roy Halladay was supposed to be a fine pitcher's duel. Instead it was a blowout, as Wang suffered the shortest and worst outing of his career, allowing eight runs (all earned) in 2.2 innings. "He just got his ass kicked," Joe Torre told reporters after the game. And so this contest was over for the Yankees before it really started. Yeah, they managed to hit three home runs off of Halladay (two by Robinson Cano), but that hardly put a dent into the Jays lead. Final: Blue Jays 15, Yanks 4.
"These games are easy to put away," said Yankees manager Joe Torre, whose team is 20-8 since the All-Star break, "because you can't point to any one thing and say this could have changed things."
(Hartford Courant)
The Jays finished the series with a measure of self-respect after getting waxed twice. Clearly, some bad blood has developed between these two teams. The number one chief rocker, Alex Rodriguez, did not play as his calf was still sore from getting drilled the night before. Josh Towers, the man who has won more than ten games in a season exactly once, and the owner of a 45-54 lifetime record had the chutzpah to talk trash about Yankee first base coach Tony Pena after Tuesday night's game. Jays third base coach Brian Butterfield, who used to work for the Yankees, was upset with a couple of slides from the same game. Lots of chest-puffing from a Toronto team that has several very good professional players but in total are, and have been, the epitome of mediocrity.
The Yanks and Jays play six more times against each other in September.
New York is back to six games out in the AL East as the Red Sox beat the Angels last night, but the Yanks are still just a half-a-game out of the wildcard as the Tigers and Indians continue to struggle.
Today gives a day of rest. The Yanks play three in Cleveland this weekend:
"Right now, we're probably as good a team as we've been all year," Torre said. "We'll see how good that is when we test ourselves against the better teams."
(N.Y. Times)
Amen to that. Hey, if the Yanks crap out against the likes of the Inidans, Tigers, Angels and Red Sox, well then, they don't deserve to play in October. Full speed ahead.
Oh well, Robbie's still raking, C-M W will surely bounce back next outing, and I'm ready for a 'statement' series against the Indians.
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB118644874997889967.html
this series will likely be huge in the grand scheme of things.
i was poking around, trying to get a sense of how tribe fans were looking at this series, and i liked this indians blogger's enthusiasm: http://tinyurl.com/ynohlg
(it was funny to me.)
i suppose they walked/talked/ate/slept/lived and finally died for the funk.
Very, very disappointing. They played long and hard for 2.5 hours, a nice throwback to 'the old days', but the sound was very, very poor.
First off, they did only 2 or 3 or their vocal tunes. No Trouble No More, no Blue Sky, no Melissa, no Southbound, no Whipping Post, no Rambling Man, no Midnight Rider, No Statesboro Blues. But worst of all, NO Jessica! It was a bit like 2.5 hours of a distorted Elizabeth Reed.
The bass was no poorly mixed that you could not discern any notes. I mean the guy did a 3 minutes bass only solo, and it was hard to hear a single note. It was just one big, echoing rumble. And for some reason Gregg's organ (keep it clean please) was mixed so low, you simply couldn't hear him at all, except for a few 'solos', when the band turned way down.
So with no bass or organ, there was no rhythm section.. just lots of percussion and dual guitars set on screen much of the time.
But what really killed the sound was: No Dickie Betts. I mean, certainly his unique and driving style was always an important part of the sound, but without him, it sounded like any number of others bands with any ole screeming guitarists. Without his licks it just wasn't the Allman Brothers sound.
I wonder how the guys at the sound board could just sit there while the mix was so poor. I am an old time heavy rocker and drummer, but without any audible rhythm section, 3 percussionists and 2 screaming guitars.... not to quote my mother, but it just sounded like noise a lot of the time.
The guys behind the board must simply be deaf.
I know every one of their first four albums by heart. Used to practice to their stuff daily. But I had to listen hard to figure out what they were playing and where in the tune they were. And to rub salt in the wound, there was a 10 minute percussion solo that was so boring and repetative, I couldn't wait for it to end!
It reminded me of some of those concerts in the 70's where the only redeeming feature of the evening was the interesting array of drugs we did before, during and after.
So... I really looked forward to coming home and reading about Wang humiliated the Jays, and wondering if ARod would get his retrobution.
OUCH!
What happened!
8 ERs in 2.2 innings?
Did Wang do all the drugs I was so badly missing?
And ARod sat with a sore shin?
Man... talk about $300+ of a bad night.
And no fuckin' JESSICA!
Maybe you can't go back.
And no game today. Shit.
Billy Idol was the first concert I ever went to, and I saw him again last summer, and he didn't miss a beat. Played all the hits, with the same energy as if he had just released them.
You say that like it was a bad thing. Hey, some of those drugs were pretty spectacular.
BP's Postseason Odds:
AL Wildcard
Yanks 48.83485 (down only .12917 from yesterday!)
Tigers 12.26482
Indians 11.99915
Mariners 10.04185
Red Sox 5.43637
Angels 4.93105
Blue Jays 3.13927
Twins 2.75022
AL East
Red Sox 93.67809
Yanks 6.15266
Hopefully, Baltimore (playing Seattle), the White Sox (still playing Cleveland), and the Rays (still playing Detroit) will all come through today!
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