The 2010 Giants: They can't hit or run but at least their fielding is terrible.

Friday saw the triumphant appearance of G Snide to our group (he drove out Thursday night) and we rocked the Giants/Indians game in Scottsdale for the early tilt.  Impressions: Scottsdale is nice…right next to ASU and we all know ASU has nice ladies (not that I’m looking of course, I’m just saying).  Grady Sizemore looks alive and ready to contribute, Eugenio Velez covers a lot of ground in Center for the Giants and those blessed Giants’ fans are just as delusional as ever.  “I can really see us winning the West this year,” the guy in front of us kept saying to his buddy.  This after a rousing bit of applause for the likes of Aubrey Huff, Juan Uribe and the various other hounds they have in their lineup.  That is just a bad, bad assemblage of talent–Pablo Sandoval (my third round fantasy pick) slapped (or “savanted”, if you’re G Snide) an oppo blooper into left for a single and then scored from first on a triple, cutting his shin and leaving the game for stitches on his slide into home.  With him off of the field there’s really not even an average bat in the entire lineup.  Buster Posey did get a late at bat so at least we got a glimpse of the future, for whatever that’s worth.

The afternoon consisted of a stop in Glendale where the first of two Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives was rocked.  The menu is German and since I’d just had a giant Brat at the Giants’ park I went with a salad.  And was made fun of.  Repeatedly.  Normally I would make fun of myself too but with free vouchers for a hot dog at the Reds game that night it just seemed like overkill on the wiener situation.

Al Soriano: Player voted "least likely to end up on my fantasy team" three years running

Ah, Goodyear, Arizona.  Home of the worst parking lot in the Cactus League as well as John B’s traffic ticket from the year before…needless to say JC was nonplussed about the whole affair and threatened to not drive us there/intentionally crash the car in order to avoid the whole thing.  Luckily, this time around we had everything pretty much wired.  We arrived early (!) so we killed 30 minutes playing waffle ball in the parking lot (always a win) and then followed that up by a game that involved Milton Bradley’s ejection (shocker) and some SERIOUS bombs by Lance Nix, Jay Bruce and an inside-the-park job by Drew Stubbs (move him up your draft board).  The Seattle team was also pretty sick with Ichiro and Chone generating some serious speed at the top of the order.  The highlight was easily J’s foul ball off Jack Wilson’s bat in the 9th.  By the end of the game there were probably only a few thousand people on hand so our odds of coming up with a souvenir were about as high as they were going to get.  With two outs Wilson hit a screamer that was tracking all four of us in our mostly deserted section-the ball drilled J right in the hand and then caromed a few rows back where it was one-handed by some surprised kid.  As we all got up to exit a few minutes later the kid flipped the ball to J in the ultimate reversal of fortune.  Needless to say that thing was tossed around the lot for a good half hour afterward.  The night ended with more wiffle in the parking lot while we waited for the snarl to clear up.  Good times, Goodyear.

Saturday was our last day and started (after the waffle bar, of course) in Mesa for a Cubs/Royals tilt.  The Royals are every bit as bad as you’d expect, sorry JC.  Outside of Billy Butt there’s almost zero offense on that squad.  There’s a few arms that look promising (Greg couldn’t stop talking about some no-name lefty that threw 2 shutdown innings and I’m sure will find a way onto his fantasy team at some point) but seriously how is J. Soria going to get any saves this year?  That team is a travesty.  Carlos Zambrano pitched pretty well for Chicago but again, it’s tough to get a good gauge for how dirty he was when he’s going up against KC.  19 year old top prospect Starlin Castro made a short appearance for the Cubbies and popped out in his only AB.

The second DD&D was also in Glendale and this place was called Thee Pitts and was, as you’d expect, a BBQ joint.  The food was solid-average, not much different than you’d find at a place like Woody’s in Goleta only they did have deep fried pickles, so that’s a win.  JC was of course down on the whole thing because nobody does BBQ like they do in the Midwest and have sampled the goods in both Omaha and Memphis I’d have to agree with him.  Also 15 minutes after I ate the food was exiting my ass at 50 mph in the bathroom of a Borders.  My apologies to Borders, all of their employees and shareholders.

The final port of call was at Camelback for a showdown of NL West powerhouses-the Dodgers and the Padres.  With a lefty on the bump for the Pads the Dodgers sported an all-righty lineup which boasted Belliard at First in place of Loney and Reed Johnson instead of Ethier in Right.  Easily one of the most tragic lineups I’ve seen.  The Whale’s Vagina, of course, was worse-outside of A Gonz and soon-to-be megastar Kyle Blanks there’s nothing worthwhile to see here.  Oh, speaking of Blanks: not only did he rip 3 hits he also stole a bag…watching a 6’7″, 280 lb man barreling down towards second (and beating the throw) is both awesome and terribly, terribly sad.  How you can’t throw that guy out is beyond me.  The Dodgers actually managed a meager two hits the entire game and it was a total bust as far as offense goes…Manny did hit 3 warning track bombs which is either a good sign or a bad sign, depending on how full your glass is.  The highlight of the game was easily the Jimmy Nunez appearance.  Does running into Berluti ever get old?  My sources say no.  And now that he’s sporting a handlebar mustachio the good times never end.  Actually, that’s not true-our good times ended just a few innings later, followed by another spirited game of wiffleball and some Frisbee in the parking lot.

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

A Long Ways From Home / Civilization

The drive back the next morning was just as brutal as you’d imagine-spotty radio coverage during the basketball tournament, mildly obnoxious traffic outside of Riverside and again at LAX, but really how can I complain?  I wasn’t at work and I was watching baseball with some of my best friends.  Really the only complaint is with the Dodgers themselves…it’s going to be a long season, friends and on top of everything else our owner is a total bastard it sounds like.  Camelback is incredible and the whole Spring Training vibe has to be experienced first hand at some point.  See ya next year, Phoenix.

What the desert looks like at 80 mph

One second after this photo was taken Hamilton hit a ball one kajillion miles

Hello friends,

I’m lounging around in a post waffle bar haze with the boys while we figure out where we’re going today…pretty sure it’s Scottsdale in the morning for the Giants vs. Reds and then maybe Seattle vs. Milwaukee for the nightcap.  Yesterday was good times, perfect weather, lots of scoring including a bomb by Manny that landed about 20 feet from us and a home run from Josh Hamilton that was last seen somewhere over Mesa’s airspace.  We also hit a mini-milestone, arriving in time for the National Anthem before the Rangers game–first time yet.  Well done, JC.

Because all of the Satan Beelzebub t-shirts were sold out

Camelback was every bit as nice as I remembered it, only downside was that a) there were billions of people there (game set a record for Cactus League attendance)  b) Cubs fans are pasty.  Speaking of Cubs fans, what do you make of this lady who showed up wearing a Milton Bradley Mariners jersey to a Cubs game?  Why would somebody do something like that?  I wanted to make her my girlfriend but I got too nervous to ask her because she is so perfect.  If only I’d gotten to her 5 years and 80 pounds ago.  Alas.

Billingsley pitched for the Dodgers and sadly looked like Chad Billingsley.  What else did we see…um…Soriano, Chris Davis, Rickie Weeks and Corey Heart all swing at everything and miss often but Corey Heart did spend 15 minutes signing autographs for everybody who wanted one so that’s pretty cool.

I’m going to see if I can steal another waffle and sit in the pool for a little bit before we head out of here.  Big ups, suckers.

Sadly that's AM and not PM

You see that clock here?  That is when we got into Phoenix last night/this morning.  That is not a happy time to be alive, I don’t care how much fun you are having, when it’s 4:30 in the morning really you just want to go to bed.  Of course, when dealing with JC you tend to get everywhere much later than you’d planned and AZ was no exception.  J and I sat in the parking lot of Fat Pat & Oscar’s in Costa Mesa for 2 hours waiting for JC to pull his head out, which he finally did and graciously did without his shower/blow dry/hair coiffure before we hit the road.  And two truck stops, one drive through Quartzsite and six hours later, here we are.  Oh, the good news: Marriot has an all you can eat Waffle Bar.  The chances G Snide abuses this thing?  High.  Very high.  The line cannot be set high enough here.

On today’s docket–Dodgers and Cubs from Ho Ho Kam in the afternoon followed up with the Rangers and the Brewers.  It’s sunny, warm and I’m full of waffle.  Let’s get it going.  Or actually, let’s wake up JC.

J and I are headed out right after work to meet up with JC who will of course be completely unpacked, insist on taking a shower and then blow drying his hair and then getting gas all while mumbling something along the lines of, “Oh, really?  Today is when we’re doing this?  Shoot:man, I wish I’d known it was today:I have all these things I was going to do tomorrow:man:shoot, well, I mean:yeah, I guess I can still go:just let me get some stuff together:what sport are we watching again?”  Somewhere Jeff Greenfield is nodding silently towards his computer.

Expect updates and photos along the way, friends.

Mandatory Dress Code for the Greater Phoenix Area

Big boys weekend and with our google-doc based fantasy basketball draft taking up almost all of my free time I haven’t been able to blog it.  Until now.  That’s right, folks-it’s update time.  And sorry, I’m too much of an emotional wreck to write anything about the Dodgers…I just can’t do it.  I have opinions and I have thoughts, I just can’t put them down.  Oh, ok last thing: I don’t have DVR.  I have a VCR that I seriously don’t even know how to use anymore so if I don’t catch an event live I’m basically screwed but everybody that has DVR always tells me how amazing it is for sports, will change the way you live your life, etc etc etc.  So the two times I have ventured into the DVR-sporting world have both ended badly though, the first being Super Bowl XXXwhatever when we were watching the game on tape and thinking it was live and ended up missing the Patriot’s last second (and thankfully futile) drive against the Giants and then this last weekend where Game 3 of the Cards-Dodgers didn’t tape due to some mysto-error.  So whatever, that’s where I stand on DVR.

Now, back to last weekend-Greenie and I drove from his place in Irvine out to hellhole paradise on Earth Blythe to visit G Slim and take in the sight.  And yes, that was “sight” singular and not “sights”.  THESE PLACES ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE. The highlight of Blythe was going on an extended “Deliverance” style float down the Colorado River which ended with me huddled around a cooler of beer in a rubber raft trying to fight off the shivers.  After a lovely (and that is not sarcastic, the place is good) dinner in Quartzsite at Grubstake (less scary at night it turns out) the three of us got our game faces on for the much anticipated Cardinals game the next day.  University of Phoenix Stadium is, just like everything else in Phoenix, impossibly new.  Since I forgot my camera I was forced to take some images with my phone which didn’t really do justice to the niceness of the environment or the number of food options available.  Our seats were fairly pure, unobstructed views and a nice little escape aisle right behind our seats so we could exit behind our aisle rather than have to fight through people to get to the concessions.

It's Nice

The game itself was solid…slow first half but as fantasy owners of both Larry Fitzgerald and Owen Daniels it was a points bonanza (sadly we were going against Andre Johnson who might be the best receiver in all of football, in fantasy at least).  I was all ready to complain about the parking situation there which essentially consists of parking (for free) at a high school about a mile and a half away and then being bussed to the Stadium Friday-Night-Lights-style but the total wait time round trip was maybe five minutes which is outstanding.  No traffic whatsoever either there or back (coming from the other direction might be a different story though) and a mere ten hours later I was comfortably back in my bed in Santa Barbara.  Obviously you can’t put a price on hanging out with two of your best friends for a weekend but if you were to do so you’d be looking at about $80 for the tickets, $50 in gas and then a few bucks for food as well (food is cheap in those parts).  Good times.

This weekend: Vegas for Silver’s bachelor party.  Any tales from the sports books will be passed along at will.  As I type this Ryan Howard has just gone deep to put Philly up 1-0.  Dammit all to hell.

**UPDATE**

Much rejoicing.

Bend But Don't Break

We were about ten miles out of the Stadium, heading north on the 5 when James Loney chased Andre Ethier home with a single up on the middle, cutting the Marlins’ lead over the Dodgers to 8-6 and bringing the tying run to the plate when Rick Monday said, “This Dodger team has really changed the way the fans see the game.  If you come out to the stadium, DO NOT LEAVE EARLY.”  Not exactly what you are hoping to hear when you’ve invested a little over three hours in a sweat-filled Sunday afternoon at Chavez Ravine before packing it in but so it goes.  As (un) luck would have it, Matt Kemp fouled out to end the comeback bid, as Jessica, Jesse (the SB Little Brother) and myself headed West on the 134 (John B had driven up for the day and he was battling his own demons on the 110 I suppose).
My advice to those of you out there looking for an offensive outburst–try to catch a Dodger game where Jason Schmidt is on the bump.  Over three lifeless innings the Dodgers’ starter threw puffballs up to the plate which were batted around the yard (don’t think I’ve ever seen so many lefties pull balls into the RCF gap as I did yesterday, a sure sign the Schmidt/Weaver duo was not bringing any heat) with reckless abandon.  The Dodger highlights were few and far between, a Russ Mart HR and a Matt Kemp crashing catch in Center (which is essentially a daily occurrence now) likely being the only takeaways.  But who cares about winning, Sunday was all about some good seats for cheap (thanks Stubhub) and taking the little fella to a game.  Negative traffic either way and a Dodger Dog and mini-bat makes for a fine day at the yard.
The real disappointment was no Manny in the lineup, despite the fact that Thursday was an off day.  Also when in the hell are we going to get another pitcher?  Kuroda can’t be trusted, Schimdt is sadly probably done and that leaves us with the three headed monster of C Bill, Kershaw and Wolf going into the post season…this is the same business model the Chicago Cubs employed last year-best regular season record and went into the first round against the Dodgers as an underdog, Zambrano laid an egg and the rest was formulaic.  I don’t want to give up anybody already in uniform for Halladay but if he is our last, best chance what are we supposed to do?  The Indians are supposedly listening to offers for Cliff Lee, how about getting in on that for McDonald, Lambo and whoever?  Yes, that makes them a little lefty-heavy but last I checked the Phils lineup had a few lefties of their own, right?  And look what Lee has done vs. Lefties this year.  Yes please.

While all of that was fantastic and excellent and wonderful there were a few things in last night’s game that demand some extra attention and here they are in no particular order:

Top 8th, Phils up 3-2: Philadelphia
- R. Ibanez singled to right center (oh shoot)
- R. Troncoso relieved B. Leach (Troncoso is not as good as his numbers, imo)
- P. Feliz singled to right, R. Ibanez to second (shooooooot)
- E. Bruntlett sacrificed to third, R. Ibanez to third, P. Feliz to second (shoooooooot)
- G. Dobbs hit for C. Coste (duck for duck)
- G. Dobbs flied out to left (Shallow left.  Like it’s Juan Pierre in left and you can’t even tag up shallow)
- M. Stairs hit for J. Moyer (Matt Stairs, pinch hitter extraordinare–Jimmy Rollins on deck)
- M. Stairs intentionally walked (WAIT A MINUTE JOE TORRE.  YOU ARE WALKING MATT FREAKING STAIRS TO PITCH TO JIMMY ROLLINS?!!?  WHAT?  REALLY?)
- J. Rollins flied out to left center (Wow.  Just wow.  Have you ever seen anything like that before?  2 years ago J Ro was the NL MVP.  Now he is a liability)

Top 7th: Philadelphia
- B. Leach relieved G. Mota (Mota, most effective outing since 2004)
- C. Utley lined out to center (great catch by Matt Kemp ranging to his right and tracking the ball down)
- J. Werth walked (Dodger killer)
- R. Howard flied out to deep center (check the video here for another grab from Kemp)
- J. Werth caught stealing, pitcher to first to shortstop (Sit)

And yeah, the bottom of the 9th was exciting.  Any time you’re high fiving random dudes in the stands you know you’ve had a good night.  Phillies’ reliever Chad Durban might have had the last laugh with this gem of a twitter tweet last night:

I can tell the US is in a recession because the Dodgers fans were throwing nickels at us instead of quarters in the bullpen tonight

ZING.  Well played, Sir.  Well played indeed.

Not where we stayed

Yeah I went to Vegas for the weekend and yeah it was fun but seriously, who really cares? We’ve all been to Vegas and we’ve done whatever there is to do there. You know where you HAVEN’T been though (Jeff Greenfield excluded) is a Bloc Party show and that is what I would way rather write about. First of all, how often does a band that only plays the standard Hollywood-San Francisco-New York circuit play a random show in a tiny venue in San Luis? Umm:never. Secondly, how often have you been to a show in a second rate market (ok, twenty-second rate market) like San Luis and seen the band treat you to a first rate performance? Umm:also never. I won’t bother you with the set list or any real specifics but I will tell you that if you buy a ducket to a BP show and aren’t BLOWED AWAY I will refund your money. If there is a more genial and accessible frontman than Kele I would certainly like to know; and yes the British accent certainly helps with the whole persona but this is a man who truly loves what he does and who among us can really make that claim? He is a joy to watch work.

Attendance: 998 kids, G Snide and BG

Now, onto the sports: the Dodgers are a juggernaut, my friends. Both ESPN and Fox Sports’ oh-so-scientific Power Rank currently has them as the #2 team in all of baseball (FLA being #1) and Fox Sports has them at #1 so things are looking good which is nice but as a blogger it’s way easier to write about what’s wrong than what’s right. So what is right? The O-Dog obviously, Matt Kemp is still prone to chasing the breaking ball away but is being more selective and shortening up with two strikes—he will be a top 6 Fantasy outfielder next season, put it on the board now. What’s wrong? We’d all (especially me) like to see more pop from Big Game James but as long as he’s OBPing around .400 at least he’s not doing any harm. Before the season most everyone agreed the staff looked a little thin but assuming Kuroda comes back in the next few weeks a 1-2-3 of Billingsley, Kuroda and Kershaw looks solid enough and you’ve got to figure the Wolf-Stultz/McDonald combo is going to be serviceable so it’s not quite as jacked as it first appeared; one (or another) injury could change that though and I would bet they’d go so far as to add an Oswalt or a Harang from a non-contender if things got really dire on the pitching front.

Ooooooooooh, doctor.  I’ve got the last softball game tonight–we are 0-fer-the season but we are worse than our record would indicate.  It’s go time, bitches.

Sightlines

The Mexicutioner, John B and myself left Phoenix yesterday and endured the 7 million mile drive back to civilization and immediately jumped into our 2009 Fantasy Baseball draft, a 5 hour affair held via the magic of the interweb.  I’ll get to everything else on a later post but here’s what happened during our final day in the horrifying squalor beauty of Goodyear, Arizona.  First of all, getting from Phoenix to Goodyear may seem like a trivial matter but good God it is a long way out there and but eventually we stumbled upon the home of the Indians and Reds after mistaking not one but two high schools for the ballpark.  After enduring the most Mickey Mouse parking situation of all time (at least in Surprise they didn’t charge us $5) which the Mexicutioner described as “The U-Turn of Death” we arrived in the 2nd inning, our have-yet-to-arrive-for-The-National-Anthem streak securely intact at a whopping 4 games.  Whatever, first innings are lame anyway.

The game was nice and featured a good comeback win by your Los Angeles Dodgers, sparked by a massive home run to left by Russ Mart.  I still don’t see him as a middle of the order bat and would feel much better if they permanently penciled him into the 2 or 7 slot but it might have been the hardest hit ball we saw all weekend.  Also of note was 9th inning man Charlie Haeger, a knuckleballer who is fun (if not terribly effective) to watch.  Sadly getting out of the stadium was again an exercise in futility which ended with a not-so-fun confrontation with Arizona’s finest.  The rest of the day was spent with Bud Lights, Outback Steakhouse and the last round of NCAA games.  Do Saturdays get any better?  I say no.

J. Martin--Get Used to It

Sunday involved the aforementioned drive of death which included a stop in the lovely city of Quartzsite, Arizona which makes Blythe, CA look like Paris, France.  Never have I been so terrified in a small town as I was in Quartzsite.  Have you ever seen a Burger King with a “Please do not bring weapons into this establishment” sign on the front door?  Neither have I.  On the plus side, if you are in the market for a Confederate Flag, I have just the store for you.  You stay classy, Quartzsite.  Look for some photoshopped ballpark pics and fantasy sports talk coming your way tomorrow…I’m back in the office so lord knows I have nothing to do.  Big ups to John B and el Eme–J and G Slim, we’ll get it going next year mis amigos.

True Believers

Dia de dos of our trip to Phoenix started very similar to day one–we again had to wait for John B to take care of his “errands” which apparently involved some sort of high finance, and by high finance I mean something that you can’t just do at an ATM.  Who actually goes into banks?  I don’t think I’ve been inside of a bank in probably 10 years.  John B is crazed.  When he finally got back to the hotel to pick up The Mexicutioner and myself it was a short twenty minute jaunt out to Peoria, where the Mariners and Padres share a nice facility that is oddly enough in the middle of a strip mall.  No joke, you could foul a ball off and have it land in either a Hooters or a Famous Dave’s, no problem.  We kept our streak of missing the first inning alive which is no big loss except for the fact that we had lawn seating for the game, which meant that by the time we found a few square yards of grass the sightlines were somewhat limited.  I think normally it wouldn’t have been too bad but since the Mariners were playing the Brewers there were a lot of people from Milwaukee there which roughly count as 1.5-2 people based on their sheer mass.  CC Sabathia really should have just stayed there.  To be honest I’m not really sure who even ended up winning the game but Ken Junior did hit a two run bomb in his final AB and got a standing ovation every time he came to the plate, which was nice to see.

After a quick lunch (and by quick I mean roughly 90 minutes to get our enchiladas but again we had to wait 30 minutes for John B to attend to meeting someone that he knew was in town) it was back on the freeway to the 6:00 Royals-Dodgers game in Surprise Stadium, aka THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE.  Sadly you cannot take a freeway to THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE but have to drive in stop and go traffic for 45 minutes on surface streets along with every single other person from Southern California who thought going to THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE sounded like a good idea as well.  Of course we arrived in the second inning but the complex itself was gorgeous and I would put it on par with Cambel Back if there was only a freeway that made access easier.  It’s probably just that the Royals aren’t used to crowds and have no idea how to prep for them.  KC pounded the Dodger pitching and ended up running away with the game and you should consider moving Coco Crisp up your draft board a round or two–guy looks good for 10 HRs and 40 SBs, all while playing plus defense too.  The same can not be said for someone named Xavier Paul, who the Dodgers had plugged into left field, he took arguably some of the worst routes I’ve ever seen to fly balls.  Surprise probably had more Dodger fans than Royals on hand but all the KC people we sat with were great and everyone seemed to enjoy the FLO TV that was providing us with all of the NCAA games, a must for travel these days.  Oh, and speaking of KC fans, is the picture above not the saddest thing you have ever seen?  Were the Ross Gload T’s all sold out?  God bless you, KC fans.  The Mexicutioner and I are up and ready to roll to our last game today at 1:00 (Dodgers-Indians) but do you want to put money if if John B is up yet?  I’ll take the under.