I would love to be able to interject something clever, to ease the malaise with wit and wisdom, but I feel I am woefully under equipped to offer any solace, any sort of panacea to any of you that managed to brave the shit-storm that was Phillies baseball last night. When you turn on a television, the goal is to extract a modicum of entertainment from the device. Last night, the people who walked up to the plate for both teams (I believe it may be something of a stretch to call them hitters) entertained no one.
Cumulatively the Phillies and the Giants managed thirteen hits and one run. Matt Cain threw nine innings of scoreless, two hit ball piggybacking this start off of his last effort; a one hit shutout of the Pirates.
Cliff Lee threw TEN INNINGS of shutout baseball. He struck out seven and allowed seven hits. Words can not really accurately describe how anemic both teams looked. Lee and Cain had a multitude of single digit pitch innings. There is something to be said for a pitcher’s duel, but I always feel considerably better about them when the team I like wins.
The Phillies had an opportunity to score a run in the top of the eleventh inning. Carlos Ruiz doubled and was sacrificed over to third by Freddy Galvis. It was exciting to see a guy on third base with less that two outs. Jim Thome was summoned to drive in the games winning run. He struck out. There may be some discussion as to Charlie Manual’s decision to allow Thome to hit against a LOOGY (Javier Lopez). John Mayberry Jr. and Placido Polanco were on the bench, but have been struggling mightily. I suppose I would have used Polanco in this instance because there is a real chance that a weak ground ball to short would have won the game. Anyway, Mayberry grounded out to end the threat.
I will summarize the winning sequence for the Giants as follows; single, Wigginton error, winning hit for Melky Cabrera.
Crap. Good thing I stayed up until one in the morning to be agitated by watching baseball.
Next up the Padres.