Zack Greinke, AKA The Only Reason To Give The Kansas City Royals Time Of Day, went eight innings in his latest start last night, which is like “balls and a half deep” by today’s standards. Most guys go five innings and they start looking into the dugout like some 9-year-old that got lost in a mall. Anyway, Greinke also struck out 15 batters as the Royals stopped a 5-game losing streak, 6-2.
“My plan was to get ahead with pitches, and once you get ahead, to finish it,” Greinke said.[...]
“I knew I had a bunch [of strikeouts] after two or three, but that happens a lot and I slow up big time, but I didn’t really think much of it until the fifth inning when there was 10, I think.”
Greinke’s ERA now sits at 2.43, best in the AL and third-best in the bigs behind Chris Carpenter and Matt Cain.
Elsewhere in baseball…The Rockies had another walkoff hit last night; this time it was the unflappable Troy Tulowitzki who singled in the bottom of the 10th to get past the Dodgers, 5-4. They Rockies are now only 2 games behind in the NL West to LA, whose lead in that division was allegedly insurmountable…The Over prevailed yet again for the Nationals; they scored six runs in the fifth of their tilt with the Cubs at Wrigley. Most of those runs were on Carlos Zambrano, who gave up eight runs but then got one back with a solo homer in the third. Washington prevailed, 15-6. Oh, and the Red Sox won, but screw them.
No, the Chicago Cubs weren’t sold to the bone-softening condition caused by a vitamin D deficiency, but to the Ricketts, some billionaire family who won the team with a $900 million bid. I figure that’s $900 million that’s not going to Sarah Palin’s run for the White House in 2012, so that works for me.
The Ricketts family effort, led by Tom Ricketts, who lives in the Chicago area, still has a number of hurdles to cross before taking ownership of the Cubs, including receiving approval from 23 of the league’s 30 owners.[...]
The family patriarch, J. Joe Ricketts, grew up in Omaha and started a discount stock brokerage. In the 1990s he transformed the company into an Internet trading powerhouse now known as TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. He is ranked among the world’s billionaires, according to Forbes magazine, with an estimated net worth of $1.2 billion. via.
You’d think a guy with his own internet trading shop could see what a horrible investment the Cubs would be. Unless he’s investing in suffering, racist T-shirts, and dead goats. Man, these investment guys are always one step ahead of everyone.
ASYLUM POLL: What team most needs new ownership?
Our streak of Spanish-themed posts ends at three today, as we feel compelled to bring you this video of TV’s Erik Estrada (of Puerto Rican descent) having one of those regrettable on-air conversations during a Cubs broadcast, where he brings up child pornography and Ron Jeremy’s package. Estrada, who played a California Highway Patrolman on the 1980s hit, CHiPs, actually works in law enforcement now and is lobbying for Congress to ruin the internet for the rest of us create harsher penalties for child pornographers. Oh, is that what he said? I guess I should put away this Dutch schoolboy outfit. I just keep that in the closet, you know, for kicks. You never know when you’ll be entertaining Dutch people.
You’re not gonna believe this, but Sammy Sosa tested positive for the juicy juice. Sosa’s positive result from the baseball’s 2003 “practice” round of testing was leaked to the New York Timesby “lawyers with knowledge of the drug-testing results from that year.” Why the hell are all of these old tests from 2003 suddenly trickling out to the public?
for reasons never made completely clear, the test results were not destroyed by the players union and the 104 positives were subsequently seized by federal agents on the West Coast investigating matters related to the distribution of drugs to athletes.
The union immediately filed court papers alleging that the agents had illegally seized the tests, and over the past six years judges at various levels of the federal court system have been weighing whether the government can keep them. An 11-judge panel in California is preparing to rule in the case, but regardless of its verdict, the losing side is expected to appeal to the United States Supreme Court.
Wow, I don’t know if the game will ever recover from this. Even after this flunked steroid test and the corked bat exploding in 2003, nothing was worse than him bringing a translator to Congress in 2005. He speaks English! And that translator couldn’t stop him from Palmeiro-ing, either. Congress trying to bring “integrity” back to baseball. How laughable is that…
Here’s Carlos Zambrano’s epic meltdown in the Cubs game against the Pirates yesterday, and it’s true: you can’t spell “pirate” without “irate.” But what I don’t get is that Zambrano goes to the dugout, grabs a bat, and then starts assaulting the Gatorade machine in the dugout. First of all, that’s badass product placement. But really, what the hell did Gatorade ever do to you? It’s only provided refreshing electrolytes to its consumers since 1965.
No word on how long Zambrano or the drink dispenser will be out of action. But whatever; when you sign for $91 million, you can rip the ivy out of the centerfield wall and weave it into an evening gown if you want. Vegetation makes terrible padding anyway.
|via Hot Clicks|
Mr. T sang “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” at a Cubs game over the weekend. And…it was pretty GD awful. But when you’ve been in The A Team, Wrestlemania, AND Rocky III, you’ve earned the right to suck at everything else. And why is Van Pelt digging on T dropping that first pitch in the dirt? That’s still better than anyone in the Washington Nationals bullpen. Burnage!
|Brownbagged at Larry Brown Sports|
