Always October

Nothing like watching baseball in October.  Looks like things in Kansas City have gone about as fur as they can go.  But if they keep playing like this, they will win the whole thing.  6 steals in a single game—wow! I used to joke that I had a hard time cheering on KC since I wasn’t a masochist and they only had two guys, Roy and Al. Well, and Billy Butler, so make that 3.  But this year they have a whole host of young guns and even traded for Aoki—anybody called ‘A Okie’ is OK with me.  What they play is what we used to call Whitey Ball in St. Louis—hustle stuff, named after manager Whitey Herzog.  The Royals call it their Dyson Ball.  Which is why they swept the Angels. 

I often watch a game and turn off the volume when Shirley goes to bed and I get tired of the banter of sportscasters.  So much of sports announcing is sugar-coated and designed only to feed the egos of old, converted jocks who show off their knowledge of the game.  But if you’ve ever played sports, no matter how much you know, it means nothing unless you can perform.  Some can, some can’t, some have other problems. So you never hear announcers say anything controversial, “He’s dumber than a brick but can sure hit the ball.  He’s got a bad attitude, a real coach-killer, but throw him the ball and he makes touchdowns right and left.”

With the TV on mute, I watched most of the Nationals game against the Giants.  Pitcher pitched a high ball up around the armpits of a batter and the ump called a strike. Batter got upset.  Another pitch around the armpits and another strike call which struck him out.  Batter got really ticked off, slammed his bat in the dirt and got thrown out of the game.  Manager came out and protested and he got thrown out.  Now all this time, I noticed that the usual manner of showing the strike zone box and the slow-mo of the pitch was never done.  But after all the eruption, they finally reviewed both pitches.  Being an undistracted deaf guy watching only the screen, I noticed something.  Somebody had defined the strike zone way up at the armpits, not mid chest as is the rules.  Sure enough, it showed both pitches were truly strikes.  Ahem!  So after all the ruckus, and by this time I had the sound on, the next batter came to the plate.  Same pitches, up high.  But interestingly enough, this time the ump called balls.  Hmm. 

When I was a kid in days of yore I hated the Giants.  Giants fans always noted that they had won more pennants than any other team except the Yankees.  But if you looked at this historically, they won about 9 out of 11 before 1921—the days of yore-yore.  I’d even root for Dodgers because they hated the Giants more than anything.  Nowadays the Giants play good ball but grow even better beards.  Must be allergic to razors.  You can tell they come from cool San Fran because only mad dogs and Englishmen have a lot of hair and play in the summer in Houston or Florida.  They have good pitching, headed by Bumgarner.  Good German name.  I had a friend named Bumgartner, which is what Bumgarner derives from.  That means you can’t even grow a tomato.

Washington had the Senators when I was a kid.  I didn’t understand, but newspapers used to call them the “Nats” (i.e., Nationals) because they thought “Senators” was too big a word for headlines.  (as a poor speller, I thought that calling a team the “gnats” was an insult.) So the headline would say, Nats stun Yankees.  Nowadays we know Senators as Presidential Wannabees and we also text.  If they had had these advancements in the 1950’s the headline could have been even shorter, “PWs stun NYY”.  Of course that would be a worse insult than Gnats.

And of course, if the Cardinals ever regain their speedster team as in the 80’s, they won’t be able to call it Whitey Ball, because that would be racist.