Thursday, April 7, 2011

Good Fausto Shows Up

WOW what a game! And I only say that because I just finished listening to it (no TV for me) and Tom Hamilton makes almost every play sound like it's the play of the century, and the last play of the game negated the sleepy two and a half hours that preceded it. Pitchers' duel.

The Red Sox are 0-6, and the Tribe swept Boston for the first time in 10 years. I know it's only the 6th game but once again THAT is another nugget of excitement that comes with following a team passionately (and positively!)

So Good Fausto showed up and he rocked! No runs, 4 strikeouts. Knocked his ERA down from 30.0 to 9.0 (yay?) and all of that in SEVEN innings. Woohoo!

Acta also neatly managed his bullpen again today by pulling reliever Chad Durbin at the first hint of trouble and replacing with Rafael Perez (who got the win after facing just a couple of batters...heh), who worked his way out of a jam in the 8th and then passed to Chris Perez (save #2!) who finished them off.

There was a bit of luck for C. Perez, as the final out was due to a running error on the part of Boston...their runner rounded second and fell down. We've gotten a few things to go our way like that lately (see last night's force out bungle) but whatever - we'll take it! Here's the video of that play...however exciting the TV announcers are, imagine them being 10x more excited and that's how Tom Hamilton called it, punctuating it of course with his famous "...BALLGAME!"

John Lester was impressive for Boston as well, and he kept our bats quiet even though he also had a bad Opening Day (not as bad as Bad Fausto did). We also actually had our "B-Squad" out there, with Adam Everett at third, Shelly Duncan at DH and Travis Buck in center. Interesting to think what may have happened if Hafner and Brantley started but Acta seemed to know what he was doing with his lineup.

They'll be traveling out to Seattle for a 10:10 PM (eastern) game tomorrow, so giving some guys some rest as well as working out out bench is probably a good move.

Aside from the base running error that ended the game, all of our excitement came at the end of the 8th. Guess who won the game? Asdrubal, that's who! I forgot to mention last night in my "OMG ASDRUBAL!" post that he's also a good bunter. Acta didn't forget, tho. With Adam Everett on third, and one out, Asdrubal managed to lay down a great suicide bunt down third allowing Everett to score. The only run in the game and OMG ASDRUBAL! Here's the video, once again with only 1/10 the "oomph" you'll hear on the radio.

Man I thought this post was going to be all short but it's pretty lengthy considering there were exactly two plays worth noting in the whole game! Good job MLB.com on getting video up so quickly. That will come in handy as my opportunities to watch games on TV dwindles throughout the season. Now if only they had the radio feed for the audio, you all could feel the excitement too!

Catch you tomorrow night, late, for Seattle's home opener!

Radio Chatter:
"How good are one dollar hot dogs? Even Buck Showalter doesn't have anything bad to say about Dollar Dog Night."
- Tom Hamilton

"I'm not sure if it's the time change or what but I just looked at the clock and we're one hour ahead of where we were last night."
- Mike Hegan (commenting on the length of last night's game)

2 comments:

  1. Droobs' bunt was not an easy bunt, either. He had to reach out of the strike zone for that one, and what a beautiful job he did to even keep that one fair!

    Despite Hammy being Hammy, I didn't feel like he gave me a heart attack today. I can't figure out if I'm relieved or disappointed.

    Anyway, go Tribe!

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  2. Oh man, you listen to Hammy out there in LA? That's awesome I am so glad you have the technology!!

    Last night I was listening on mlb.com to the radio stream while watching the game on digital cable. There was a delay of MINUTES. I still couldn't help myself :)

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