(my view during warmups of the bucks / heat game in january. some lucky dude will have this same view for game six! go bucks go! photo: me).
"Just leave with me now,
Say the word and we'll go (we can go),
I'll be your teacher,
I'll show you the ropes (you the ropes),
You'll see a side of love
You've never known (never known),
I can see it goin' down,
We're goin' down ...
In my head!
I see you all over me ...
In my head!
You fulfill my fantasy ...
In my head!
You'll be screamin' loud ...
In my head!
It's goin' down ...
In my head!
It's goin' down ..."
-- Jason Derulo, "In My Head", this week's "Song Steve Can't Get Out of His Head". That, and watch the video. He so totally rips off Justin Timberlake's "Like I Love You", one of my favorite songs from the last decade. A winner in my book ...
* What a gutty, gritty, ballsy performance last night by the Boyz N Blue! Facing arguably the best pitcher in baseball, facing him with arguably our worst starter ... the Royals jumped out 2-0, got six rock star innings out of Kyle Davies (more on him in a moment), and then, after Dusty Hughes somehow got out of the seventh (dare we dream Royals fans? a competent bullpen performance!), saw emerging stud / star / savior? Billy Butler calmly, cool-ly lead off the bottom of the seventh with an abject smash to left center.
Is it too soon to call him Billy Ballgame?
I refuse to read too much into one victory. The Royals are still just 8-11, they still have a brutal 11 game road trip that will make or break the season coming up starting Thursday, and are still managed by the single biggest idiot coaching a team in the majors. But if -- and this is an enormous if -- if the Royals survive this upcoming road trip from hell, and are in contention come June, come July, its not a stretch to say we'll look back on last night as the turning point of the season.
I was emailing with my buddy Heath all day yesterday, and I couldn't stress enough how huge last night was. I think the Royals need to take at least two of three in this series (and actually think we have to sweep), given how enormous this upcoming road trip is. Any sensible fan would have written last night off as a loss. King Felix against Kyle Davies.
You know, that Kyle Davies who has allowed at least three earned runs in every start so far this season. That Kyle Davies, who has been such a disappointment for so much of his career.
That Kyle Davies, whose line last night looked good enough to outduel Felix Hernandez:
6 IP. 108 pitches, 63 for strikes. 1 hit, 3 walks, 5 strikeouts, 0 runs.
And the win, thanks to some gutsy pitching by Dusty Hughes to save the seventh, Kyle Farnsworth to save the eighth, and Bruce Chen (yes, that Bruce Chen, the failed Braves prospect from almost a decade ago) to save the ninth.
And since I didn't do it last Friday when I meant to, let me say two brief phrases of praise for our manager, Trey Hillman.
1. He's done the best job anyone could do with this bullpen. Not even Jesus himself could figure out how to salvage this wreck of a bullpen. What is Hillman supposed to do, pitch Soria 3 innings every night? Its impossible. What Hillman HAS done, to his credit, is lengthen the save situation for Soria. Rany hit on this on his post on Sunday, and he's dead on right. Yes, as a result of asking Soria to go 4, 5, even 6 outs, instead of 3, you run the risk of having a situation like last night, where Soria simply can't pitch in a close game. But what choice does he have? I wouldn't trust anyone else out there to walk the dog to take a whiz at this point. They're that unreliable. Hillman is trying to maximize the one asset he has out there. As much as I hate the guy, I'll give credit where its due. No sensible fan can argue with his handling of the bullpen. That's improvement.
2. Hillman made a comment after Sunday's game that just totally fired me up. It completely changed my outlook on this team, this season.
"I know this might be hard to believe, but there's a lot of emotion in that room (tonight). We're only getting started".
The last two nights, there's been a confidence in this club that hasn't been there since early 2004. If its possible for a loss to be a catalyst to a season turnaround, maybe Saturday night's was it. The players had it out after Saturday night's debacle. Sunday, you saw a team that didn't panic, and somehow fought through a ton of mistakes to salvage a win. Last night, you saw Kyle freaking Davies look like the Cy Young candidate, and Billy Butler use Felix Hernandez like his own personal urinal. The bullpen has been shaky, but held, two days in a row. (Who'd have thought a dude named Dusty would be Mr. Reliable at this point?)
Its only two games. But the tide has turned. At least in terms of me being on board with this team ...
* Speaking of a turning tide, your Milwaukee Bucks everyone!
After two crushing (and one-sided) defeats in Atlanta, the Bucks came home Saturday night, and absolutely obliterated the Hawks. John Salmons was on fire. Jerry Stackhouse was playing like it was 1998 all over again. And best of all, BJ was on fire early, draining not one, not two, but three early three pointers to stake Milwaukee to an 18 point lead they wouldn't relinquish.
And, contributing a play of the year candidate to boot. Good God, what a play!
And then last night, in a game thought so unwinnable that TNT opted to air the down 0-3 Charlotte Bobcats instead ... Salmons, BJ, and Carlos Delfino willed this team to victory, 111-104, in a game that embodied everything that rules about the NBA (wide open offense, fast breaks galore, solid free throw shooting, solid three point shooting, and Mike Woodson getting taken to the woodshed by Scotty Skiles. Of course, I could take Mike Woodson to the woodshed strategory-wise, and that's after a bottle of vodka, but still).
So we head back to Atlanta knotted up at 2, an unthinkable outcome as recently as 72 hours ago. I love underdog squads that just simply never give up. Everyone wrote this team off when Bogut was lost for the year. Just like everyone wrote this team off when Michael Redd was lost for the year. Just like everyone wrote this team off when Ramon Sessions and Charlie Villanueva were allowed to walk without compensation. Just like everyone wrote this team off when RJ was traded for nothing but luxury tax breathing room.
We've got us a series! Game five in Atlanta tomorrow night, 7pm CT. I feel a live blog upcoming ...
* Speaking of "got us a series", your Kevin Durant's everyone! If you're a Lakers fan right now, you have to be in a state of at least semi-panic right? The Lakers haven't looked good in two months. They survived games one and two. They got destroyed in games three and four. I realize its only game five, and that no matter what happens tonight, the series isn't over, but in the words of Dan Dierdorf, it would behoove the Lakers to find a way to win tonight. You do NOT want to go to the capital city of Oklahoma down 3-2, not with that insane crowd opposing you.
* Do or die time tonight in Dallas for the Mavericks, trailing 3-1 to the Spurs. My gut says they find a way to force game six. But the stat of the day, courtesy NBA TV last night: only 8 of 191 teams trailing 1-3 have ever come back to win the series. That's 8-183. The Mavs have their work cut out for them.
* Boston ends it tonight. No way Miami sends this back to a game six.
* I'd like to thank the Charlotte Bobcats for their participation in the 2010 NBA Playoffs. Please pick up your commemorative "nobody believed in us, and for good reason!" t-shirts on your way out the door.
* No new "Lost" tonight. But there is an all new bowling league tonight! 6:30pm at AMF College Lanes. Team "I Don't Give a Split" makes its (probably drunken and possibly stoned) debut. Should be good times had by all. At least until someone starts screaming to "hit the god damned headpin!" and teammates start throwing bowling balls at each other in frustration. Oh wait, that already happened last league? OK then, this one should be good then, now that we've got that out of the way.
* Finally, in the words of Keith Olbermann, a Special Comment.
The state of Arizona recently passed a bill designed to fight the issue of illegal immigration. No doubt you've heard of it. The bill authorizes law enforcement officials and agencies ...
Scratch that. It doesn't authorize them.
The bill ORDERS law enforcement officials and agencies to detain any person they suspect of being illegally in this country, and demanding proof on the spot of their immigrant status. If the person cannot prove they are lawfully in this country, they can be arrested and fined.
Arrested and fined. In the United States of America. For simply failing to have, what, exactly, to prove your status? Have we REALLY come to this as a nation, that if you don't have your birth certificate on you at all times, you can be arrested for simply drawing breath?
ANYONE who supports this bill should question their conscience. This isn't "fighting illegal immigration". This is racism at its most blatant and obvious finest. This is a return to the United States of the 1840s, the 1850s, where blacks that had been freed had to carry papers on them at all times to prove they weren't runaway slaves. And even then, the Compromise of 1850 rigged the judicial system to find in favor of said black person still being a slave. (And Dred Scott of course ruled that blacks weren't human beings, they were pieces of property). Papers didn't matter; the word of the white man did.
Are we really going back to that dark moment in this nation's past? Where the color or tone of your skin determines what people think of you?
The fringe right has spent the last year arguing that the current administration's policies are fascist, are nazi-like, are totalitarian. To which I now respond, if THIS bill is not everything you decry the Obama administration for allegedly being, then what is?
What's next, tattooing a gold star on everyone to more easily identify the undesirables? You laugh, I know. "Steve, we'll never reach that point in this nation. We'll never segregate a segment of society simply because of who they are". Really? Really? We just did on Friday! It is now a criminal act to simply be of Hispanic origin if you live in Arizona. You can now be arrested, detained, illegally searched, illegally questioned, have every damned civil right known to man tossed aside, simply because you look Hispanic.
I lived with a Hispanic guy in college. One of my best friends. Born and raised in El Paso. It is now legal, if Frank were to visit Phoenix for whatever reason, for him to be stopped while walking down the street, and have to prove his citizenship on the spot. This is the United States of America. We're not talking about some banana republic, some communist dictatorship. Here. In the United States. It is now legal to arrest people for failing to provide immediate proof of who they are.
Congratulations, conservatives. You warned us about a nazi state coming to this nation. Who'd have thunk it would be you that delivered it? How sad that the party of Lincoln, the party that delivered the Civil Rights Act of the 1960s, the party that until recently has been the model of inclusiveness, the model of diversity, how sad that THIS is the party pushing for this. I'm not saying illegal immigration isn't a problem; it is. I am saying that this is NOT the way to combat the problem.
It is now an arrestable offense to simply walk the streets of Arizona. My question to the idiots that sponsored this heinous bill is simple. What's next? What's your next move? Consider that in the last week, one state in this nation just decreed that simply drawing breath makes it legal for law enforcement to detain you. No probable cause, no crime committed, no reasonable suspicion of malfeasance, other than the color of your skin. Simply being is now a detainable offense. So what's next? What's your next move? What group will you target next with your utter nonsense?
This makes me utterly sick to my stomach. In this nation, the alleged beacon of freedom to the world, the alleged light on a hill, we have just legalized racial profiling. We have just decreed a large class of people to be less than equal citizens. (At least for once the far right isn't viewing gay people as subhuman. They've targeted another group now. I guess that counts as progress?)
I don't care what your political persuasion is. Mine is left-leaning, as is obvious by simply discussing politics with me or reading other posts on this site. But even if I leaned right, I'd fight this bill with everything I could. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that all are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". Sorry, Thomas Jefferson. The state of Arizona just whizzed on the basic crede this nation was founded on. All in the name of "freedom", and "defense of the nation".
Which is admirable. I'm all for defending the nation, I'm all for freedom, I'm all for combating the evils and problems and trials and issues that face the greatest nation God ever allowed to come into existance on this planet.
But what's the point of defending a nation that embraces the undefendable ...
No comments:
Post a Comment