Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Goonies Never Say Die


Photo: AP

This game was looking an awful lot like the first two games until the ninth inning. I don’t know what happened with Verlander. He was dominant until the sixth inning, and then the Blue Jays started hitting everything hard (I will tell you this: I was smelling Edwin Encarnacion home run for this entire series). How do you go seven innings with nine strikeouts and no walks, but give up ten hits and five earned runs? But the Tigers were able to bail him out, which they don’t often do, and the bullpen was very, very good. Marco Scutaro, who is a good defender at shortstop, made two costly errors for the Blue Jays, the latter of which allowed the winning run to score (Mario said he cursed him for breaking his headset on a foul ball in the seventh inning). The big blow came from Aubrey Huff’s pinch-hit three-run homer in the ninth. I have never seen anyone swing the bat THAT aggressively and make contact before. The reaction shot in the dugout brought its own amusement. Miguel Cabrera jumped onto the back of Armando Galarraga, who piggybacked him all the way to the stairs (Geez, the guy’s already dealing with a sore elbow; you don’t want to add back problems to that). And I love Inge’s expression in that photo. After the game, there were more antics with Armando, who tried to give Alex Avila the towel full of shaving cream while Alex was being interviewed (mostly he got the back of his head, but it was still funny, especially the fact that Armando managed to mug the camera as he was sneaking up on Avila).

Well, from now on, it’s all Central, all the time. First up, the Kansas City Royals come into town, and, as strange as it sounds, they’re hot right now. They swept the Tigers and then took two of three from the Indians. And the Tigers will be facing two pitchers they didn’t do a lot against last week, PLUS Zack Greinke. Jarrod Washburn takes the hill tonight for the Tigers. It was a battle for him back in KC, but he somehow managed to go five innings and only give up three runs. The Tigers will see Robinson Tejeda again, and he shut them out the last time they met. Tejeda’s on quite a scoreless streak right now, and he’s got really good stuff. Your Mood Music for tonight: Well, Patrick Swayze died yesterday. I thought I should post something Swayze-related, but “She’s Like the Wind” doesn’t really fit. So I settled on this, which kind of describes last night’s victory. And hopefully we can sing it again tonight.

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