Tag: baseball

Historic Halladay

I know, not only am I writing about sports but doing so at least a day late. Lame. Regardless of my lameosity and the fact that Lineu… Luncem… that kid from San Fran pitched an almost equally amazing game last night, I just had to point out how awesome Halladay’s performance for my Phillies on Wednesday was. In case you shudder at the notion that people still follow baseball or hide your head in the sand whenever sports in general are mentioned, let me break it down for you:

After spending 12 years going no where with the mediocre Blue Jays, Roy Halladay requested to be traded to the Phils so that he might finally get to feel what it was like to pitch in October. Over the course of the season he dominates just about everybody and ends up at or near the top of every major pitching statistic while helping to lead his new team to their third straight division title en route to an almost guaranteed second Cy Young for himself. Oh, he also managed to pitch the 20th perfect game in Major League history, too. Finally the time comes for him to make his postseason debut and what does he do?

Throws the second no hitter in postseason history.

Damn.

If you have some time and even a passing interest in the game, do yourself a favor and watch the highlights and listen to the former players break down his pitching. Hearing their attempts to even describe what he was doing shows just how masterful and beautiful it was. Check out Ruiz’s heads up play from behind the plate that saved it all and the celebration that followed.

The Woman can confirm just how nuts I went – looking forward to more Scotch-worthy moments in the coming weeks. One down, ten to go!

Congratulations are still in order

I’ve more or less been avoiding sports pages and what not since the game ended last night. To be honest, this one doesn’t really hurt. Don’t get me wrong, I’m bummed about the loss. But the reality is that repeating as World Series Champions is darn difficult – heck, just getting the opportunity to try it is rare. The Phillies are only the third National League team to do it since the introduction of the divisional round. More importantly, this was the first Phillies team to ever return.

So certainly there’s a somewhat bittersweet taste to another successful season. But I look at it this way: over the course of more than 2 decades I only ever saw the Phillies go to the playoffs once; and in the last 3 seaons I’ve seen them win 3 consecutive NL East titles, 2 consecutive NL pennants, and 1 World Series championship. That’s quite a successful run by any standard. And it doesn’t appear to be over.

So congratulations to the Phillies (and… I guess… the Yankees, too) for another great season. At least now there’s less reason for me to stay up past my bedtime… wait a sec… what am I still doing up?