Enough Already

Now that Barry Bonds has tied Babe Ruth’s home run record, must every story about the San Francisco Giants be about Bonds? The headlines in today’s Yahoo! Sports baseball section about the Giants’ game reads “Bonds stays at 714 homers, Giants win”. It’s not until four paragraphs into the story do we learn that Matt Cain pitched the game of his lifetime, allowing only one hit and throwing a complete-game shutout. The Giants won 6-0.

This evening we watched half of the episode that deals with the Babe Ruth era, the 1920s, in the Ken Burns baseball series.

Skiving

“Skiving” is a word I learned, like so many others, my first term at boarding school in Derbyshire. It means to goof off but there’s more of an element of deception implicit in the term. Like you’re really getting away with a LOT.

This afternoon I skived off from my class in the most impromptu way to go to a baseball game at the newly renamed and surely to be renamed in the future ATT Park. Class itself was skiving off from chores at home which would otherwise have been skived off from by going to Whole Earth or gardening or going for a bike ride or a swim.

Skiving’s good thing to do. In general. And in specificity.

Tomorrow I’ll post a couple of boards I made at my class. What fun that was… [done, Monday May 15]

Little League, Davis Style

We went to our first little league game ever today. Our friends Rick and Donna invited us to come watch; Rick is the coach of one of the Davis teams, the Rangers. He is unusual in that he is involved with little league without being a parent. Alas, the Rangers were having a hard time today—when we arrived it was 4-0 White Sox; two hours and three innings later, the score was 23-8 White Sox. Rick attributed this to it being the first hot-weather game. Nevertheless, we had a lot of fun. Fly balls are always an adventure; the pitchers are alternately getting shelled or missing the plate; and the spry kid who hit a home run had the biggest grin on his face when he leapt on home plate. At left is a sketch of the Rangers’ catcher during the much-needed pitching change.

Wild One In Phoenix

The Giants just beat the Arizona Diamondbacks 10-9 in a wild game. At one point the Giants led 7-0, only to fall behind 7-9, and then the Giants caught up and took the lead in the top of the 8th and 9th. Despite having the worst team batting average in the major leagues, and a complete lack of production from Barry Bonds, the Giants are somehow managing to win games at this early point in the season.

Go Ags

The best college team in baseball in the United States is, at the moment, Cal State Fullerton.

They probably have major league scouts crawling all over their dugouts, all the time. We’ve seen them play here at Davis. They are frightening.

The UC Davis Aggies beat them yesterday, 2-1. The first time the Ags have defeated any No. 1 team in any sport, ever..

Two Of Three

The A’s just beat the Yankees 9-4, coming back from a 4-2 deficit, to win the opening series of the season two games out of three. Of course the baseball season is barely in infancy, but this is quite satisfying, especially after they shelled the A’s opening day. In some ways the Yankees are the American League reference team, but they are definitely vulnerable. They have a potent offense, but lackluster pitching and a somewhat shaky defense (two errors tonight, one of which figured in the A’s five-run rally in the bottom of the eighth tonight). The A’s seem to have a very good mix of players—I was especially pleased to see Frank Thomas, their newly acquired slugger and DH, come up with a two-out, three-run double late in the game.

Opening Day Minus One

We’ve just started watching the Ken Burns baseball series, thanks to DocRock who has kindly loaned us her set of DVDs. The season opens tomorrow, with the defending champions the Chicago White Sox playing the Cleveland Indians. Most of the teams start their season on Monday. The A’s get right in the thick of battle, taking on the New York Yankees at home on Monday. I’m excited about the prospects of the A’s this year—it’s a young, enthusiastic, and strong team. I’m not so cheered about the state of the Giants, who were ailing last year, and haven’t gotten any younger. Their closer, Armando Benitez, is already on the DL.

Assuming it isn’t pouring, we’re going on a watercolor outing up at Cold Canyon tomorrow. Accursed daylight savings time also starts: the only good aspect of which is that the cats will be waking us up for their breakfast an hour later.

Triple Play?!

The baseball season is almost here! This evening we joined Barbara and Susan to go see the Sacramento River Cats play in an exhibition game their parent major league team the Oakland A’s. The rain held off and we only had light drizzle to contend with. The game went as such exhibition games tend to go, with the A’s winning 5-1 behind their strong starting pitching of Rich Harden. The River Cats gave a good accounting of themselves, their pitcher Shane Komine holding off the Oakland bats until the 4th inning.

The most dramatic play occurred in the top of the 7th. Pica had gone off to the box office to pick up tickets for the game in a couple of weeks, and left me with scoring duties. The first play was a fairly solid single by Mark Kotsay, followed by a squibber for a hit about three feet in front of the plate by Marco Scutero. The next play I notice is a fly ball caught in mid-left center, followed by a relay to second base, followed by a throw to first base catching the running off base. And the River Cats start leaving the field, the inning over. Umm—I either profoundly messed up on the scoring, or I just saw a triple play. Barbara and Susan both thought it was a double play, though they didn’t think two people were on base. But when Pica was returning from the box office, she ran into another friend, who asked oh, did you see the triple play? No, she hadn’t, alas.

Spring

Many thanks to everyone for their kind blogday wishes.

Baseball’s coming! If all goes well and the weather cooperates, we’ll be seeing the A’s take on the local River Cats at Raley Field!

I need to shake the dustballs off my scorepad, find some suitable warm clothes to wear, and the like.

Update, March 30: at left is a copy of a Benin mask-portrait of the Queen Mother, who died four years ago today… I especially like the hat.

Valentine's Day Ballgame

While the Northeast is still digging themselves out from a blizzard, we spent this Valentine’s Day afternoon sunning our toes in 70-degree weather at a baseball game. We were joined by yesterday’s guest blogger Barbara Anderson who has been suffering much from baseball deprivation. The game pitted the UC Davis Aggie team against the Cal Bears. The Aggies got off to a rough start in the top of the first: the leadoff batter hit a fly to left which was muffed, and Cal went on to score three runs. The Aggies soon caught up and were ahead 8-3 by the bottom of the third. We left early to do a couple of errands and Barbara had a class to go to, so we ended up missing the exciting bit. Cal rallied in the 8th and 9th innings but the Aggies added to their score to win the game 13-9.