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Didn’t call the matchup, but still psyched for it. Fan rants, McCarver rants, let it all out here.
I’ve (re-)discovered a few things over the course of the recent Days Of Rage. Some of them are great!
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a lonely girl in possession of a library card must be in want of a twin. The child who spends a lot of time in books also spends …
Well, I guess playing minor-league teams didn’t work like we thought it would.
Verlander’s gonna catch hell for that grin he gave the pitching coach right before Sandoval took him deep again. I really try not to let that stuff get to me, but boy, they’ve showed it a couple times now and I want to punch him in it every single time.
We can’t get anything started on offense, the defense is everywhere but where they need to be, and Pablo Sandoval apparently went on a vision quest and found out his spirit animal is not the panda but Hank Aaron.
I’ve cast Adrien Brody as Tim Lincecum in the heartwarming biopic about a down-on-his-luck pitcher getting his confidence back, but I’m open to suggestions.
Can they show the Skyfall commercial again, like, forever?
Adrien Brody’s got about a foot on Tim, though. But check out Tom Hiddleston as Loki in the Avengers movies, the resemblance is uncanny.
I wish I had cool and funny baseball analysis, but as a dedicated Giants fan who’s been shedding years of life through these playoffs, I’m still just reeling in shock from the last four games and wondering if the magic can continue. Way to capitalize on defensive errors, switch pitchers like bubblegum, and Marco Scutaro your way through, guys.
As a Cardinals fan, I kind of feel better about the NLCS now. Or at least the part where our offense looked completely inept against Zito. Clearly he has borrowed whatever magic beans Jeff Suppan acquired in 2006.
Also, I only caught the first few innings of the game, but did they ever stop taking the musical cues entirely out of the Time Warner Classic Rock of the 70’s collection? Between that and Billy Crystal I felt like Fox didn’t think anyone under 50 was watching the game. (And yes, I know, Springsteen, but at least that was a new release.)
Well, technically I’m still in mourning over my Cards imploding, but man, I have to hand it to the Giants…they have been totally unstoppable the last 4 games. At first I wanted the Tigers to spank them as revenge, but now I just don’t know who to root for! I mean, wow.
So there’s this piece in the current issue of Sports Illustrated about Joe Buck. They insist he loves calling games and is not a dick, fwiw. (I’m….unconvinced.) But what truly blows my mind is that he grew up with both Paul Rudd and Jon Hamm, and they’re still buds. That just doesn’t compute in my brain.
Not that this factoid adds anything to our discussion. But if I have to listen to Joe drone on, I’d like to do it imagining Hamm sitting in the booth with him.
I have to root for the Tigs if only because Jim Leyland described himself as a mugwump last week.
McCarver rants? Mine starts with “Barry” … and ends with “Manilow”.
I want to chalk it all up to magic, but the baseball analysts I follow on Twitter pointed out some of it was very predictable. The two biggest differences between these teams are bullpens and defense. The Giants have both, and the Tigers…not so much. So when the Giants put the ball in play, things can happen.
That said, those home runs were some sort of magic, and Zito rediscovering himself, that has to be magic.
In honor of my beloved feline Gus, I’m rooting for his favorite team, The Tigers.
Hiddleston! Duh! Can he do an American accent and look stoned?
Read a Deadspin article about how Sandoval swung at pitches no other batter would even look at, which is apparently the secret everyone’s been seeking on how to beat Verlander. Like that bit in ’80s movies where someone with a ridiculous made-up fighting/dancing/singing style succeeds where all others fail. Gymkata, anyone?
I think we might have been better off keeping V in and walking Sandoval every time he came up, though the way things were going, he might’ve swung at some of those pitches three feet off and still gone yard. Our relief pitching is no.
I want to start a drinking game where we all have to do shots whenever Buck mentions those new-fangled cameras that let us see things in super-slo-mo and they show the most annoying shots of pitchers throwing the ball or batters trying to hit the ball, but if we did play, we’d all be in the hospital with alcohol poisoning by the fourth inning, cause damn.
I have neither confirmed or denied this, but my husband swears he heard Buck was quoted as saying something to the effect of “sometimes I’d rather watch The Bachelorette.” in regards baseball in general. I find this hilariously apt about him, if it turns out its true.
Also, Go Giants!
Oh, sweet fancy Moses, that was brutal. Just ugly all-around. Aside from Verlander completely imploding at the worst possible time, it was a pretty typical Tigers outing for this season. Inconsistent offense, bullpen disasters, giving up home runs, finding the MOST RIDICULOUS way to hit into a double play, etc.
I really don’t have an issue with Verlander’s expression when Jones went out. At that point, he had only given up two runs and he’s usually incredibly capable of getting out of that kind of situation. I don’t think anyone was sensing panic yet. I took it more as chagrin or whatever, not anything smarmy.
What the hell was up with Joe Buck’s hair in the pregame podium bits? Could someone not go out and windproof it in the commercial breaks? I couldn’t stop laughing. I also cannot stop laughing about the “Pandoval”. I hate Buck and McCarver, but that was gold.
Can we get rid of the in game dugout interviews? No one cares, we want to watch the game, and the interviewees want to watch the game.
Cannot believe Fister is still in after taking that line drive off his head. Don’t think managers should be letting someone who just got hit in the head decide if they stay in the game.
Power to you, Fister. But Fielder!!! WHAT ARE YOU DOING? What, what WHAT are you doing?! Look at your play! Look at your choices!!!
“also cannot stop laughing about the “Pandoval”. I hate Buck and McCarver, but that was gold. ” My husband and I came up with that months ago. If only we’d copyrighted when we had the chance.
Confidential to McCarver: Stop trying to make MadBum happen. It’s not going to happen. And it’s stupid. Also, shut up McCarver!
How exactly do you get HIT IN THE HEAD WITH A BASEBALL and react so little that the broadcasters assume it must have deflected off your glove? You just shrug at the trainers and say you’re fine? Holy Christ, was that terrifying. My husband and I spent the whole game worried that he was just going to collapse at any moment, but no, he went out there and pitched like nothing had happened for the rest of the game? Damn. I’m sure the trainers were checking with him every inning. You do not mess around with that stuff.
Unfortunately, my worst prediction for this series is coming true. The amazing vanishing Tigers offense has returned. “Pitching wins championships” is all well and good, but you actually need to, you know, score some runs for that to happen. We didn’t exactly blow the Yankees away, either, save for the Sabathia game. Sigh.
@FloridaErin Completely agree re: Fister. I’m stunned they didn’t take him out right away and get him an MRI. After the game I read they still didn’t take him for an MRI. How do you not take him for a scan after he took a baseball off the head? I was afraid he was going to drop dead on the mound or last night or something. If I was his agent, I’d be on the phone screaming at the Tigers for not getting it checked more thoroughly.
I live in the Bay Area and with both parents from San Francisco, you bet my blood runs orange. Though I am not a diehard, I’m pleased and surprised at how things have panned out.
What I’d like to see/read less of is Panda’s size, how fat he is, etc. That gets a huge ugh from me, I don’t care for what team you’re rooting.
Well, Tigers, that sucked my left buttock clean off my body, so now I have to sit all lopsided. /GBC
… Still, there’s always next year!
That was . . . I don’t want to say predictable, because that sounds so negative, but how about “not entirely unexpected”. I’ll put it this way. My dad texted me yesterday afternoon to ask how my nerves were and if I’d be okay regardless of the outcome, and I responded that I’d always known that this team would hurt me and had already come to terms with it. I mean, when you only manage to score like 6 runs in four games? You’re gonna have a bad time. The pitching was exactly as expected (with one exception, JUSTIN…), and the offense was exactly as feared. I would have rather NOT lost an elimination game in extra innings, though. Oh, Tigers.
Congrats, Giants fans! Your team did everything right and they deserved the win. And now let the long winter of rumors and drama begin!
@FloridaErin, you sound like my Yankee fan self when Jeter got hurt. I knew the season was over then, I was hoping they would put up a fight. They didn’t. Whatever.
My Giants fan self is thrilled and stunned by how this all went down. I never expected them to get this far, and I thought the Tigers would make it a series. I was wrong, and so, so happy to be wrong.
Could Buster Posey be any cuter? Really? He looks 15!
Well done, Giants, of course.
I never got this “underdog” narrative in 2010, and I still don’t get it. Now that they’ve taken six of their last six, can we agree that this team can win postseason series, should the matter come up again in the near future? In 2010, that rotation in a five- or seven-game series should have worried any team. This year, there were question marks over the rotation, but there were compensating strengths elsewhere. When Mike Matheny was asked by reporters if he considered the Giants a “pesky” team, I was annoyed. Yeah, they were quite the runty little nuisance, backing into the postseason as the second-best non-division-winning team, and then taking a one-game playoff with the help of a dubious call. Oh, wait. That was Matheny’s Cardinals. The Giants won 94 games. AND THEIR DIVISION.
Had it turned out Cardinals/Tigers, that would have been the first WS match-up in which neither team managed 90 regular-season wins, right? (Not counting 1981, obviously.) I’m sure it will happen eventually, but I’m glad it was forestalled.
When Laird (was it?) took that backswing to the head, Tim McCarver reminded us that it wasn’t until the last 20 years or so that catchers started wearing the modern protective helmets — before that, “All *kinds* of damage was done.” I’m sure I was only one of thousands watching to say: “Clearly.”
@Todd- Yeah, that was Laird that took the backswing. I think it was the second time it happened to Laird or Avila that series, too! The way Avila gets beat around back there on a daily basis, if he wasn’t wearing the modern helmet, he’d be dead by now!