Monday, May 24, 2010
That Was Ugly
In the last two Giants-A's Interleague games I've attended, the Giants have scored exactly zero runs. The last such game I had gone to see between these two teams ended with something known as Lenny DiNardo shutting down the Giants completely. Yesterday, with me sitting there once again in all my sunburned, alcohol-fueled glory, the Giants were shut down by Ben Sheets and his three merry men. Right about now, I'm halfway convinced that the next time I go to one of these Bay Bridge games, the A's could trot out a 65-year-old Ken Holtzman and he'd throw a one-hit shutout.
Yesterday was just embarrassing. I mean, the whole weekend series was like a bad joke, but yesterday's game was especially miserable because I had to sit there in my mock Zito jersey (my Lincecum jersey was in the wash) and take in the insults from the surrounding wasted A's fans like a jackass. A 500-pound A's fan danced and yelled trash talk as he nearly brought down the bleachers under his girth, and some jerk tried to mockingly high five me on the way out of the stadium. If I had been drinking during the game, he'd have gotten a foot in the nards. I've cooled in my views toward the A's over the years since my utter hatred of them as a kid, but games like this threaten to break the increasingly tenuous cease-fire.
Honestly, I could handle most of the crap from the game yesterday. I could handle the drunken A's fans and their none-too-witty jabs, safe in the knowledge that the only way they get 20,000 people to their crappy ballpark is when the Giants roll in. I could also handle the raging sunburn and the awful Coliseum hot dogs, and nearly being crapped on by seagulls after the game as we waited for (likely) over 0.08 BAC drivers to filter out of the parking lot.
What I couldn't handle was the pathetic way the Giant hitters just went down like flies throughout the entire weekend. They didn't work counts, they didn't hit the ball hard, and they didn't seem like they had a clue, ever. Aubrey Huff and Andres Torres are the only players on the Giants right now who are putting up decent at-bats. Pablo Sandoval has had a horrid month, but at least he looks like he's maybe sorta coming out of it. Aaron Rowand and Freddy Sanchez look absolutely horrible, and Juan Uribe and Bengie Molina seem to be slipping back toward the dreaded mean. Being an eyewitness to this stuff was pure torture.
On the bright side of things, it's now almost two whole months into the season, and Jonathan Sanchez has an ERA of exactly 3.00. The grueling starts that turn into walk-a-thons and pitch count nightmares are becoming fewer are fewer, and his BB/9 rate is down considerably. The evidence continues to grow that the mechanical adjustments he made half way through last season are truly paying off. Despite all this, he still has a Matt Cain-esque 2-4 record, leading to conspiracy theories that the Giants feel they have to put every starting pitcher through a hellish season with zero run support as a sort of inane rite of passage.
Yesterday was just embarrassing. I mean, the whole weekend series was like a bad joke, but yesterday's game was especially miserable because I had to sit there in my mock Zito jersey (my Lincecum jersey was in the wash) and take in the insults from the surrounding wasted A's fans like a jackass. A 500-pound A's fan danced and yelled trash talk as he nearly brought down the bleachers under his girth, and some jerk tried to mockingly high five me on the way out of the stadium. If I had been drinking during the game, he'd have gotten a foot in the nards. I've cooled in my views toward the A's over the years since my utter hatred of them as a kid, but games like this threaten to break the increasingly tenuous cease-fire.
Honestly, I could handle most of the crap from the game yesterday. I could handle the drunken A's fans and their none-too-witty jabs, safe in the knowledge that the only way they get 20,000 people to their crappy ballpark is when the Giants roll in. I could also handle the raging sunburn and the awful Coliseum hot dogs, and nearly being crapped on by seagulls after the game as we waited for (likely) over 0.08 BAC drivers to filter out of the parking lot.
What I couldn't handle was the pathetic way the Giant hitters just went down like flies throughout the entire weekend. They didn't work counts, they didn't hit the ball hard, and they didn't seem like they had a clue, ever. Aubrey Huff and Andres Torres are the only players on the Giants right now who are putting up decent at-bats. Pablo Sandoval has had a horrid month, but at least he looks like he's maybe sorta coming out of it. Aaron Rowand and Freddy Sanchez look absolutely horrible, and Juan Uribe and Bengie Molina seem to be slipping back toward the dreaded mean. Being an eyewitness to this stuff was pure torture.
On the bright side of things, it's now almost two whole months into the season, and Jonathan Sanchez has an ERA of exactly 3.00. The grueling starts that turn into walk-a-thons and pitch count nightmares are becoming fewer are fewer, and his BB/9 rate is down considerably. The evidence continues to grow that the mechanical adjustments he made half way through last season are truly paying off. Despite all this, he still has a Matt Cain-esque 2-4 record, leading to conspiracy theories that the Giants feel they have to put every starting pitcher through a hellish season with zero run support as a sort of inane rite of passage.
