Before that, though, the business at hand - I sent out 40-ish e-mails yesterday (and a few lingering ones this morning) of personalized feedback for the Sprawl tryouts. This takes much longer than you might think. I tried to walk the fine line of letting people know the rationale behind our decisions, relaying the things we'd like to see them work on, and avoiding the general abject off-pissing of those cut with condescending thoughts of how they can maybe next time meet our approval. (The plural first person here, incidentally, is not royal but represents Dheintime and me - again, he has been out of town the last three weeks, so a lot of this has fallen on me, but we have maintained close contact w/r/t decision-making and such, and hopefully everything has gone smoothly). And I, you know, tried to write something authentic, meaningful and helpful, as opposed to a "hey, great job, better luck next time." Anyhoo, this ate up a fair bit of the afternoon, but hopefully was well worth it - if nothing else, people have gotten direct feedback, and no one can claim that we have not been forthcoming with our decision process.
Side note - I also found out yesterday that one of our new recruits, Andy, can't play with Sprawl. This is classic agony and ecstasy type stuff, as two weeks ago it came out that he wanted to play with Sprawl, and we were elated; a star had just fallen in our laps. Por supuesto, as is often the case with hippie Ultimate players, it turns out he's *actually* looking for jobs all over the U.S., contiguous and otherwise, and didn't really feel like he could commit. Things come up, sure, but this was more than a tad annoying, and more than that disappointing; I had been looking forward to playing with the homey. It also further complicated our team status, as we've now had two guys drop and another who can't attend one of the few tournaments to which we will travel. So I also spent part of the day scrambling and consulting with other veteran players as to which alternates should fill in and why. Hopefully we've got everything figured out, but to repeat a sentiment, no doubt that this aspect of things is the least appetizing part of being a Sprawl captain.
Getting back to the drill - I otherwise had one plan for the day, which was to watch the Uruguay - Netherlands World Cup semi-final. GREAT match, and yes, I, too, am caught up in the tetra-annual fever. Or something. The Netherlands won 3-2, if you're out of the loop, and there was all kinds of drama with potential off-sides calls missed, etc. (I've got more to write - not a lot - about the WC, but that is probably best for a different post). Karmically speaking, an intentional handball did NOT lead to a World Cup Finals berth*, so all is okay with the universe.
* - I don't link to the guy enough, especially since I ripped off his asterisk in-text footnote trick some time ago: Joe Posnanski has a post about the intentional handball that nails it quite well. The only thing I would add is that Joe P. doesn't really discuss the "it feels wrong" aspect of the story, which seems like the most interesting aspect of it. I'm trying not to give away too much here; read the story and send me an e-mail if you're interested in chatting about it. And bookmark Joe's blog while you're there; he is undoubtedly one of the best sportswriters out there (Nyet said, echoing a sentiment that has been echoed some gerbillion times).
I enjoyed a delicious barbecue pulled chicken / Mexican casserole for lunch while watching futbol on the laptop, and Beck backed up that spot-hitting meal with an early dinner featuring tuna steaks, yams, and the spinach cakes I made the other day. She rushed to finish it and got it done just in time; we ate at 5:30 and got out of the house by 5:55 to head down for a 6:40 start. Living in central Sunny Azz has its privileges: after a quick drive, parking and walking a block to the stadium, we were in our posh seats at 6:25 and ready to watch two former world champions square off. Here was the view from our seats:
Speaking of that view, and speaking of that 6:40 start, you'll notice the bevy of empty seats there. This was not some accident of our location:
That is a seriously empty ballpark, particularly for a WGN-fan-based Cubs game. I don't know how much of this is explained by the 6:40 start time, nor do I have a clue why the DBacks start the games at that time - it definitely seems to prevent the commuters from getting to their seats by the first pitch, as the park did fill up more by the 3rd inning. I assume it has something to do with television rights or dodging the start times of the other West Coast games. Regardless of the explanation, it doesn't explain Tuesday evening's paltry showing. The stadium-broadcast and official box-score attendance, which can generally be assumed to be hyperbole if not an outright lie, was only 20,067. For a Cubs game! What the hey-hey?
Problem one: the aforementioned ridiculous seat prices. They're idiotic; you can't charge that much for 1/162nd of the season, folks. Problem two: "the economy," or what have you. Scapegoat explanation, but in combo with problem one, I am sure it's having an effect. Problem three: the Diamondbacks are GOD AWFUL this year. They're 32-52 and 17 games out of first place in a tight division, so their season is effectively already over. They just fired their coach and replaced him with the fist-pumpin' Kirk Gibson, but all the limping theatrics are not going to help a team with the 30th best (AKA 1st worst) runs allowed rate that can't be overcome by a free-swinging-and-missing offense that sits at #16 in runs scored. The bullpen is silly bad with a 6.90 ERA, and the starters aren't exactly smoking either (4.70). It's worse because they've got a slew of young talent that just keeps not turning the corner, so Phoenix is left with a poorly performing team that strikes out a ton. There are some homers to go along with those big whiffs, sure, but it's effectively a terrible season of people who are *just* short. People are disinterested / disheartened - it's tough backing the 'backs these days.
But STILL - the Cubbies are in town! Which brings me to problem four: the Cubs are terrible in a whole different way. They aren't overmatched, they have the talent... they just can't play baseball this year. They've got a stacked, expensive lineup... that is 26th in the league in runs scored! Up and down the roster, well-compensated, historically good performers are having bad years. Case in point - rock solid reliable 3rd baseman Aramis Ramirez is batting .184/.247/.327, which is just unbearable to watch; for a star of his caliber to have those numbers at this point in the season is cripplingly embarrassing. The Cubs pitching / defense has been mediocre, too, at around 18th in the league in runs allowed, so it's unsurprising that they are 37-47 and 10.5 games back. In short, a huge letdown of a Cubs team was visiting a god-forsaken DBack team, and neither club's fans bothered coming out.
So Chase Field was dead. From the first pitch,
an utter lack of joy peppered the closed-roof room. It didn't help that both pitchers cruised through the first three innings in 38 minutes - Silva gave up a run to the DBacks, but the game started off largely offense-free, forcing everyone to draw their entertainment from the usual sequence of t-shirt cannons and hot dog races. Somewhere around the 4th inning, as the limited crowd trickled in to completion, things picked up a little, and toward the end, the game got downright exciting - tying runs at the plate late, the whole nine. I'll skip a recap; the Cubs won 6-4 (actually, they just completed the series sweep as I write this on Wednesday night) by fending off a late rally and getting some runs by severely unexpected spots. Some points of note:
Kosuke Fukudome went 1-5 with a solo HR and 3 Ks. The HR was his 2nd in as many days, not something you should bet on too often with KF, but the strikeouts stood out to me more. He had 36 Ks in about 244 PAs before the game, and is generally a slap hitter who doesn't miss terribly often. Sometimes the patterns clump, I guess. The other thing that a performance like this compels me to do is imagine what you would think of a player who did this routinely - someone who batted .200 with a .200 OBP and an .800 SLG, who struck out constantly but was good for a homerun per game. That's a skewed 1.000 OPS, the type of stat that would command top dollars... anyways, that would be a strange player, but ever since those years (e.g., 1989) when McGwire would bat .230 with 30+ HRs, I've thought about what it would be like to have someone actually just churn out those kinds of days. With sabermetric type thinking, natch, we realize that those guys are more valuable than you think in some ways and less in others... I digress.
The aforementioned slumping A-Ram hit 2 HRs! They were near carbon copy shots to the LF power alley and definitely made the difference for the win. If you couldn't tell above, I feel for the guy - he just looks lost and depressed at moments - so seeing him play baseball competently was a treat.
Woah, wait... backing up a paragraph... speaking of guys who hit .200 and only hit homeruns, Mark Reynolds! Seeing the guy who smoked his own single season strikeout record in person was fun. Wacky to look up at a guy's stats before the all-star break and see 113 in the Ks column. At the end of the game, he came up against the Cubs masterful strikeout artist - we're talking a ludicrous 17 Ks per 9 innings pitched here - Carlos Marmol. I turned to Beck and surmised that given this irresistible force and incredibly moveable object combo, we were extraordinarily likely to see a strikeout. Both parties did not disappoint.
Speaking of the K machine, Marmol pitched 1 and 2/3 innings and struck out five. He almost added a sixth by coming close to striking out four in the ninth, a rare feat that would have been fun to see in person, but one that was disrupted by a nicked pop out by Snyder instead of the K. Ah, well. This afforded me the opp to explain the dropped third strike rule to Beck, so that was nice. She as infield-fly rule knowledge away from marriage material.
That's really all I've got for gameplay; you can check out the boxscore for the nitty gritty. It was a great game in many ways, though; somewhere along the way I heard that the best baseball games are 5-4 wins by the home team - a good combination of hitting, pitching and defense is likely in those games - so a 6-4 Cubs win worked just fine. Plus it was over in a quick 2:43, so a nice pace taboot.
Oh, I should not fail to mention the "Racing Gracies" or the "D-Backs Legends Race." Somebody decided that the best way to honor DBacks greats was to engage their likenesses in a theater of the grotesque. It's a standard issue wannabe Sausage race, but with the hideous bonus of... well, this:
Yeah, I know. But let's go closer for even more un-ease:
That's the gigantic-headed semblance of Matt Williams, Randy Johnson, and Luis Gonzalez (I missed Gracey, who was well out in front by this point). The tacky here is just sublime. I really can't fathom who signed off on this - it seems to wedge the DBacks into a particular rut to knowingly do something this goofy as a tribute to their cherished players that lord knows the e.g. Yankees would never deign to do. It's not the induced nightmares that are bad so much as the induced humiliation.
Anyhoo... the early game end gave us time to book it to MoJo just before closing to enjoy their Tuesday half-off deal. Fantastic call by the Beck, and a solid cap on a fun evening. Tonight (Wednesday), instead of heading downtown again, I just watched the hapless Cubs beat up on the DBacks again from the comfort of my living room. It's the way of baseball-viewing that I think I just need to admit I prefer - still, it was good to get out of the casa Tuesday for an evening and sit outside inside an AC'ed stadium for a few hours watching my favorite team suffer through a small part of yet another insufferable season. Thanks per usual to Beck for putting up with me at a baseball game, and here's hoping both these franchises turn it around soon ... lest next year the crowd feature only 10,000 fans, half of whom are youthful, cheerleading DBacks employees who annoy more than enrich.
(Yeah, I don't like D-girls, Baxter, or the rattle noises. I don't think I'm alone...).
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