Ok, I admit it — this wasn’t a good day for my mission of negotiating an optimum arrangement of the lineup. The Chief Kangaroo continues to resist my logic. He thrashed me in a game of Twilight Struggle. And the results on the field do not show many signs of delivering the proper team into first place.
Logic, symbolic fantasy league competition, and statistics… I’ve tried everything. Nothing was working.
After Ryan went to bed about 11:30 local time, I left the Mariners game on. The M’s were down 6 – 2 in the bottom of the 8th: a perfect analog to my sad situation, I thought. I noticed I was still 2000 steps short of my daily fitness steps total, so I cleaned up around the apartment (not Ryan’s bedroom, it is happily beyond my reach), and began jogging in place on tiptoe. (On tiptoe both to save impact on my knees and hips, and to be total quiet so as not to disturb Ryan or the residents downstairs.)
The Mariners started a little rally. I kept jogging — past my goal, through commercial breaks, through the midnight hour. I didn’t quit jogging until Leonys Martin struck out to end the inning. Mariners up 7-6. I had 1403 steps toward Sunday’s count.
I sat down to write the above paragraphs. In the five minutes it took, the Angels rallied on a hit, a hit batsman, a homer, and a walk. They now lead 9 – 7 with two outs and a man on. Excuse me while I resume my jogging…
Ok — here’s what happened during my second jogging stint: I turned a ground ball into a Nori Aoki single. It was very close, and clearly my running made the difference. The Angels* challenged the call. Ryan came out to see what was happening with the game. While I paused to explain what I was doing, the umpires upheld the challenge. I resumed running, but the M’s went out in order.
I have 3639 steps toward my Sunday total, but they are tainted. The M’s lost, and it is clearly either my fault for pausing, or Ryan’s fault for coming out and reversing the polarity of the cosmic forces I was channeling. **
I don’t know yet what the key was, but I mean to find out. I have at least established one thing: never leave cosmic/mystical/talismanic forces out of your analysis when trying to understand the fate of your baseball heroes.
* I am a little troubled that it was the Angels who challenged my powers to drive events 2700 miles away. But they had been working to the detriment of Angels all along, so I don’t think there’s anything going on there.
** It may all be a trick God used to get me to do my exercise. Once I achieved my Saturday goal and got a nice head start on Sunday, God had to rebalance things for the Angels.
| EFL | ||||||
| TEAM | WINS | LOSSES | PCT. | GB | RS | RA |
| Canberra Kangaroos | 26 | 10 | .713 | — | 199.2 | 126.2 |
| Old Detroit Wolverines | 23 | 12 | .649 | 2.4 | 208.6 | 153.1 |
| Haviland Dragons | 21 | 15 | .595 | 4.3 | 155.4 | 127.4 |
| Pittsburgh Alleghenys | 21 | 16 | .565 | 5.2 | 194.8 | 169.1 |
| Portland Rosebuds | 20 | 17 | .550 | 5.8 | 163.4 | 147.3 |
| Flint Hill Tornadoes | 17 | 18 | .483 | 8.3 | 141.4 | 147.1 |
| Peshastin Pears | 16 | 21 | .442 | 9.8 | 149.8 | 167.8 |
| Kaline Drive | 15 | 21 | .420 | 10.5 | 164.5 | 196.3 |
| Cottage Cheese | 13 | 22 | .376 | 12 | 139.8 | 185.7 |
| D.C. Balk | 10 | 26 | .291 | 15.2 | 143.3 | 224.1 |
Canberra: W, 3 – 2. (1.58, .298, .263; 7 ip, 1 er). Ervin Santana did a nice job (6 ip 1 er) covering for his lackadaisical hitters.
Old Detroit: W, 6 – 5. (.225, .295, .500; 6.7 ip, 4 er). Before Friday’s game Yan Gomes as 2 for 29 in May. He’s now 4 for 37, thanks to a solo homer each of the last two days.
Haviland: L, 5 – 6. (.212, .333, .333; 5 ip , 4 er). Neil Walker carried the Dragons with his 3 for 4 with a homer. Carlos Martinez dropped them with is 5 ip, 4 er.
Pittsburgh: L , 4 – 7. (.233, .353, .372; 17 ip, 11 er.) Altuve ( 2 for 3 with 3 walks) led the way again… of course. Again. This is getting tedious. At least the three Allegheny pitchers all managed to do something interesting.
Portland: “L”, 6 – 5. (.278, .341, .556; no pitching). Kole Calhoun took the Mariners apart (3 for 4 with a homer and a key HBP in the 9th inning) and the Rosebuds are shamelessly going to allow themselves to benefit from the M’s suffering. Carlos Correa also homered in a 2 for 4 performance.
Flint Hill: L, 0 – 6. (.154, .195, .282; 13.7 ip, 8 er). Ah, now I see what happened last night: Calhoun was egged on by the Rosebud management to ruin Tornado pitcher Hisashi Iwakuma’s day. It worked.
Peshastin: L, 3 – 4. (.217, .345, .261; 0.3 ip, 0 er). Michael Taylor got to play in one of the two Nationals games Saturday, and made the best of it: 2 for 3 with a double, two walks, and two stolen bases.
Kaline: L, 6 – 7. (.314, .357, .451; 9 ip, 7 er). Five Drive OPSed 1.000 or over, staking Kaline to a six runs. Clay Buchholz lost most of that lead (6 ip, 5 er) and Daniel Hudson chulked away the rest (1 ip, 2 er).
Cottage: W, 9 – 6. (.333, .395, .769; 6.7 ip, 4 er). The Cheese had the best offensive output of the day, led by the renowned slugger Jonathan Schoop (2 for 3 with 2 homers and a walk). and abetted by Mallex Smith (2.250 OPS) and four others at 1.000 OPS or more.
DC: L, 5 – 6. (.375, .389, .563; 5.7 ip, 3 er). Corey Seager went 3 for 4 with a homer to give the Balk their chance for a win. But there just wasn’t quite enough pitching to preserve the win.