Biggest Disappointment of NLCS Game 2: Poor Quality Taunting

There were a couple of stark contrasts between the baseball games of this series.  For instance, the first ended with me trying to have my boos heard amidst 6,000 cheers.  Nobody with a beard did anything worth flailing your arms about.  Chooch went 0-for-4, Roy Oswalt singled and scored, the Giants allowed J-Roll to reach first on a single that went a mile into the air and landed five feet from home plate, and Raul Ibanez had a diving catch.

But the main difference between Games 1 and 2 of the NLCS was one visual, noticeable factor.

The quality of signs.   Tonight we went from obnoxious and scrappy to incoherent, poorly written, and/or imprecise.

Come on.  We’re not idiots.  We’re idiots with signs. And there’s a minimum level of accuracy we’re expecting.

Roy Oswalt vs. Sam Perlozzo’ stop sign:

One fairly noticeable portion of Game 1 was the fact that Roy Halladay appeared to be gotten to.  Cody Ross intruded upon his mojo with reckless eruption, forcing two home runs off a guy who morphed his first post season appearance into an alteration of history.  But never was the unforgiving current of the playoffs more evident as homewrecker Ross stepped in and clubbed a par of homers off him.

Making tonight a bit more of a furious pursuit of a saving grace than the leisurely steam roll once hoped for.

So that left us with RoyO on the mound tonight, the version of the NLCS Halladay; the slice of our staff who let his thoughts–and the other team–get the better of him.

Cody Ross, unwilling to cap his incredible offense-from-nowhere magic, managed to cram yet another home run in there, but it proved to be somewhat futile against RoyO, in every sense of the term.

Home plate umpire Dan Iassogna made it clear pretty early on that he would be establishing a new strike zone for every pitch and refuse to share its location with anyone involved in the baseball game.  This little revelation seemed to turn things upside down from time to time, but Roy was stil able to strike out nine Giants through eight innings.  He also singled to start a miniature rally, and scored during said rally by ignoring Sam Perlozzo’s indication that maybe he should think about things before automatically plowing into home pla–oh shit there he goes.

Oswalt’s slide just beat the throw and got under wunderkind Buster Posey’s tag, giving the Phils an insurance run in a series where scoring is a precious commodity and ace pitching is readily available just by turning on the faucet.

Of course, by the 7th inning, it didn’t matter, because with the bases loaded and two outs, Jimmy Rollins knocked in three runs with a grand slam that was actually just a double in disguise.  The Phils went up 6-1 and all the shoddy sign making in the world couldn’t hinder them now.

Yes, it was a satistfying enough contest, this gentleman took the opportunity to barf on the field.  Kudos to the Huffington Post for digging up some story about a guy who purposely threw up on a little girl this year?  I don’t think that got enough media coverage, if it indeed happened, but if so, way to connect the dots, HuffPo!  It is totally worth mentioning the most disgusting and volatile action in the history of Philadelphia sports because something not even close to half as bad as that happened.  Journalism is so easy when you don’t have to have a reason for what you’re saying!