My men's softball team, the Pine Tars, concluded our season on Wednesday night. We were an awfully streaky team, starting 5-1, then dropping down to 6-10 before winning the final 2 games of the year, including a 22-5, 4 inning victory this week. I finished off this last game in grand style: No official at-bats, 3 walks, 3 runs scored, and an overall .434/.500/.510 triple slash.
In b4 nobody cares about your softball team, Bryz.
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OH MY GOD, WE'RE HAVING A FIRE.... sale. Or at least so it seems in Miami, where after going on a spending spree in the offseason in signing Mark Buehrle, Jose Reyes, and Heath Bell, they've seemingly spun a 180 and traded away Hanley Ramirez, Anibal Sanchez, and Omar Infante. While this does seem like owner Jeffrey Loria being up to his cheap ways once again after he realized that 2012 was not the Marlins' year, Dave Cameron of FanGraphs tells us that we shouldn't trash the Marlins for making some good trades. In the article, Cameron points out that the fire sale many of us remember - the one after their 1997 World Series victory, that is - happened under the previous owner Wayne Huizenga, not Loria. I have to agree with Cameron. While Loria has done some despicable things in the past, these transactions should help the team in the future.
- I forgot to include Prince Fielder's "diving with style" head-first slide in last week's Breakfast and Baseball post, but we have another animated GIF that involves questionable sliding technique. This time, it's Adrian Beltre, who danced his way around a Will Middlebrooks tag at second base before flopping into the bag. This reminds me of many plays in slow-pitch softball where you really don't want to slide because you're wearing gym shorts and ankle socks, and a slide means tearing up the whole side of your leg, so instead you not-so-nimbly dance your way around the tag before tearing your hamstring trying to reach for the base with your foot while keeping your balance before the opposing team attempts to Ron Gant you off of the bag.
- We all remember when Carlos Gomez was with the Twins, and how his erratic, inconsistent, sometimes puzzling play led manager Ron Gardenhire to nickname him Loose Cannon 1 (Alexi Casilla, if you recall, was Loose Cannon 2). Yesterday, Go-Go was at it again. In the first inning of a 0-0 game against the Philadelphia Phillies, Gomez lifted a high fly ball down the left field line for a home run off Vance Worley - or so he thought. Loose Cannon 1 flew around the bases, only to return to home plate to hear his teammates yelling at him that it was a foul ball. Being who he is, we all know that Gomez would finish off this at-bat in hilarious fashion, and he did not disappoint as on the very next pitch, he struck out looking on a fastball.
- Finally, we have another poll coming, so let me set the scene. Not so long ago, Chipper Jones joined The Twitter*, and Craig Calcaterra pointed out something he tweeted that made absolutely no sense.**
* My dad has a habit of adding "the" to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc., though I partially believe that he knows it's wrong and he just does it for show. I felt the need to channel him when I typed "The Twitter."
** I fail at embedding stuff, so this will have to do. Sorry, folks.
Mike b and jhey go yicketty! The roadrunner went mammo! And the Bravos have a winning road trip. My kind of day off, no action!!!
Um... what?
yicketty means homer! mammo means big bomb. roadrunner is francisco. any other questions?
Oh... okay then. I still don't get it, but whatever. Well, that seemed to be the end of it, with Chipper explaining himself and Calcaterra pointing out the hilarity of the tweets. At least until a guy named Drew Smith intervened, and basically called out Calcaterra for not being familiar with "yicketty" and "mammo." Apparently these are well known terms within the baseball world if you've played beyond high school, even though I've never heard of them, Calcaterra obviously had never heard of them, enough people on Twitter had never heard of them that Chipper Jones had to fire a second tweet through the Internet explaining what they meant, and a simple Google search turns up nothing for either word within baseball except for Hardball Talk, USA Today, and Deadspin all wondering aloud what Chipper was trying to say. Thus, our poll: