5/23/11 RSS Feed Favorites, with Coffee

The Mission Baseball Club meets the ‘Bad Boys of Summer’…


Today's pick o' the RSS Feed, with a substantial dose of caffeine...

ninety feet of perfection:
Baseball at San Quentin Prison by duanexharris
Very interesting writeup, how kool would it be to do something like this. Remember the Dragnet episode with G.D. Spradlin as the safe-cracker who actually leaves obvious clues behind that lead to his arrest so he can go back to ‘the pen’ because it’s baseball season and there’s potential for a great team?

Confessions of a Sports JunkIe:
Railcats Start the Season Off With a Bang by David Wegiel Jr.
Very nice writeup about Opening Night at “The Steelyard,” a.k.a. U.S. Steel Yard, home of the Gary (Indiana) Southshore RailCats of the American Association of Independent Professional Baseball (their first season in the league). Give independent baseball a chance! The RailCats are in the same league as the Kansas City T-Bones.

Goat Riders of the Apocalypse:
The Cubs have begun to hit well, but pitching still a problem by Rob Letterly
The Cubs have a pitching problem? Really? Blogcasm aside, this is a fine article…

examiner.com:
Randy Savage fondly remembered by his baseball teammate Tito Landrum by Nick Diunte
OOOOHH YEAHHH…the Macho Man Randy Poffo is gone, his baseball career memory lives on…especially considering it never really lived in the first place…

Eien no tomodachi,
Stevo-sama

10/8/83 Baltimore Orioles 3, Chicago White Sox 0

1983 ALCS Game 4
Comiskey Park, Chicago, IL

Ah, the 83 White Sox…on the threshold of their first potential AL pennant since 1919 and first subsequent World Series appearance since 1917, the beloved south-siders in their enormously beautiful multi-colored team gear (led by Tony LaRussa) were the hottest thing since boiling cannelloni. Even entering the series behind the Orioles (2-1), there was more than a chance of the unbelievable happening…and more than a chance for things to, literally, ‘go south.’

Two skilled starting pitchers pitched several effective innings that ended in a nail-biting 10th inning decision fired off by a lesser-known utility player.

BAL 3 9 0
CWS 0 10 0

Britt Burns (CWS) pitched 9.1 remarkable innings; Storm Davis (BAL) lasted 6. As Davis gave up a lead-off single to Greg Walker in the 7th, we was yanked in favor of Tippy Martinez, who nearly gave up the game but was rescued by a classic base-running blunder by the White Sox. With Vance Law at 2nd and Jerry Dybzinski at 1st, Julio Cruz singles sharply to left-center field. Law doesn’t pick up the call and holds up at 3rd – Dybzinski ‘runs into an out’ and in a 7-5-4-2 relay, makes it back to 2nd while Law is tagged out at home – a wasted opportunity. Not to be topped by atypical game blunders, Martinez attempts to pick-off Cruz during Rudy Law’s AB but there’s nobody covering at 1st! The official call is an ‘automatic balk,’ the runners get a base but two pitches later, Rudy flies out to LF Gary Roenicke and this corny inning is over…and the game is still scoreless.

Burns is nearly wiped out into extra innings, and shows it with a solo HR by Tito Landrum, acquired from St. Louis by the Orioles that very same year, and sporting a single HR during the regular season (and 26 games played for the Os). 2 more runs and 3 CWS pitchers later, the Orioles leave their 10th with a 3-0 lead and Martinez effectively holds of the White Sox to get the pennant and a trip to the World Series. The Orioles ended up winning it, and Landrum ended up returning to the Cardinals the following year.

I scored this came on 12/24/09.