Monday, April 10, 2006

 

Randy "For The" Winn!

Dawn and I hit the ballpark yesterday for the first time this year. Lunch at the Chophouse was good, as usual. We took a lap around the yard, seeing the new sights. The sky was all growly and threatening, but never did worse than spit at us. The sun even poked out once or twice, as if to remind everyone what it looked like.

Oh, and we saw a hell of a baseball game.

We were up in the 327 section, so we couldn't see what Schmidt was throwing, only the results. Ten strikeouts--impressive. Four walks, five earned runs in seven innings--not so hot. The bomb he gave up to Andruw Jones was impressive, and I mean that in a bad way. Not sure why the old man left him in for those last two innings, but it all worked out.

Chipper Jones' injury was pretty frightening, even from up high. You could see the skid mark he left very clearly. Sadly, the field is in bad shape, thanks to the incessant rain we've had. The infield grass has been under a tarp too long, and shows it. The center field area is still patchy as hell from the last concert. The grounds crew needs a long dry spell during a road trip to get everything back to prime condition. I sure hope that the field didn't contribute to Jones' injury, but it sure looked like it did.

Bonds is struggling with the bat. The most impressive swing he had all year was his first one, the long double in San Diego. Since then, it's a lot of grounders, swingthroughs, and walks. No reason to panic; Barry has shown himself quite capable of fixing his swing when it gets out of whack. He seems okay in the field. He made an impressive running catch of a Chipper Jones bloop, and only limped a little bit afterwards.

The ninth inning comeback was awesome and unlikely. Lance Niekro looks like a different hitter. That plate discipline thing is working for him, even when it's not resulting in a hit. He had only one at-bat where he got out of his head. If he keeps it up, he'll have more clutch moments like yesterday's homer, and he'll stick around for a long time. Pedro, on the other hand...well, he got that single in the ninth, and motored around the bags to score the winning run. I won't say anything bad about him today.

And of course...Randy Winn, with the game-winning bloop. You gotta love this guy.

Giants are in first place, baby! They're scoring a good amount of runs, too. Gotta love it. Life is good after the first week.

Jefferson 1:13 PM

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