Game 40, Yankees at Mariners
Frank Gorshin, best known for his role as Batman’s rival The Riddler, has died.
Gorshin didn’t just play Edward Nygma. The veteran actor and impressionist played the villanous Bele in a famous Star Trek episode featuring two aliens, each of whom had one side of his face painted black and the other side painted white. But see, they hated each other, because the colors were transposed — Star Trek’s second-most important critique of racism, right after William Shatner making out with Nichelle Nichols on national TV.
In honor of Mr. Gorshin’s most famous role, though, let’s use this riddling technique to dissect the rather dishonorable recent performance of the hometown nine in advance of tonight’s game.
Riddle No. 1: Riddle me this, riddle me that: a home run off Moyer will come from whose bat?
Riddle No. 2: What can you catch but not throw?
Riddle No. 3: This thing all things devours:
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays kings, brings disorder,
Destroys all, except Pat Borders.
The answers in reverse order are: time, a cold or Steve Blass disease, and “to be announced.”
Use this as a game thread for tonight’s Mike Mussina/Jamie Moyer matchup. TV: FSN. Radio: KOMO.
Comments
327 Responses to “Game 40, Yankees at Mariners”
Nellie gets the win, Villone gets the save. So their jobs are safe for at least one more game. Drat.
I was fully behind all of Grover’s string pulling late in the game. Mateo would have been my go-to guy in the 8th and start of the 9th instead of Nelly had he not been a part of the rotation now.
Bringing in Villone to face lefty Matsui, as well as keeping him in to keep Posada hitting righty and eventually Giambi if it came to it was nothing short of what I would have done.
Also nice to see Valdez, Olivo, and Reed come through big in the same game. Part of tonight is thanks to NY’s shibby defense, but hey, we’ll take what we can get.
299: And even if the Yanks do make the postseason, if they happen to face the White Sox, they’ll get thrashed.
Okay, keeping in Villone against A-Rod (0 for 8 and counting) and leaving him to face Posada and Giambi was smarter than Bo-Mel ever would have played it. Hargrove did as well as he could have sans Eddie or Julio, or an effective major league relief pitcher.
Re, 302, I suspect the White Sox are doing it with smoke and mirrors, a la the 2001 M’s only much moreso. They’d probably still take these aging Yanks though.
#299 You are right on target. I get so tired of the national media blowing smoke about the big Yankee turn around and the 10 game winning streak (which we just stopped). What the NY and Bristol flaks don’t mention is who the Yankees beat in that ten game streak. I don’t see them burning up their division but they might get the wild card in the ALCS. They certainly won’t get to the Series. Of course I am the guy that thought the Ms would win 85 games this year so take all of this with a grain of salt.
ESPN calculates Moyer’s ERA to be 15.15 in his last four starts.
ESPN also just redeemed themselves in my eyes, doing the whole A-Rod is Darth Vader bit with the Mariners being the “Rebel Alliance” fighting the “Evil Empire”. That was classic. They had John Williams music from Episode 3 going in the background and everything.
Nice job.
Speaking of Darth Rodriguez, did you hear his post game interview comments? He wasn’t happy about the loss, despite his own performance, and when the FSN chick asked A-Rod about playing his former team and the emotions and all that, A-Rod commented that he really didn’t know anybody over on the Mariners anymore (which is mostly true) and it didn’t matter. When asked about the fans though, who remember him and still give him heck, A-Rod ended the interviewing process by looking really irate and saying “I dont care about the fans.”
Hee hee hee… methinks the boy doth protest too much.
I was at the game. Loads of fun. Just jumping in. Has anyone discussed the merits of substituting Bloomquist for Ibanez in the top of the 9th? Ibanez has limited range, as demonstrated by his botched play in one of the early innings. Bloomquist would have been a legitimate defensive upgrade.
#308: LF range be damned. The last thing I want if the game goes into extra innings is Raul’s bat replaced with Willie’s. First base defense might be worth a theoretical upgrade (not for Sexson, of course), or replacing Mark Bellhorn at 2nd with Pokey Reese in the late innings of a playoff game.
But jeez, doesn’t the lineup already have enough holes without blasting a new one into the #3 spot. That’s a self-inflicted wound!
Re: #307. I saw the ESPN highlights of the game, too, and laughed out loud. Randy Johnson with flaming red eyes, a la Darth Maul…hilarious! A lot of Red Sox fans are convinced the ESPN baseball crew suck up to the Yanks, but they should have seen this. And if any Yanks fans on the West Coast were tuned in, they probably started foaming at the mouth.
It’s been asked before and will now be asked again: can anybody tell me why Winn was at DH tonight?
ahaha,
Who cares?
Ibanez wants to play in the field, and Grover is going to give him a chance to every so often. I think this is only the third time he’s been in the outfield all season.
Get over it, seriously. People were asking that through the entire thread. The hell does it matter? God damn.
#308
It annoys me that Grover starts Ibanez in LF at all. If Winn and Ibanez are both going to be in the lineup then there is no excuse at all for unnecessarily weakening your defense. Just doesn’t make any sense.
#312
It matters because bad defense can cost you the game as evidenced by the Yankees tonight. This is a team that needs every advantage it can get.
#312
It matters because bad defense can cost you the game as evidenced by the Yankees tonight. This is a team that needs every advantage it can get.
Damn, is there an echo in here or is it just me?
Sadly did not get a chance to watch the game as was watching the Enron documentary. Of course, the minute I get home SportCenter is turned on in the vain hope of seeing a few clips. Imagine my delight — a whole segment about the Mariners/Yankees game interspaced with Star Wars clips (because the brash young Jedi..er..Mariners beat the Yankees in 1995, but now the Jedi have turned to the dark side…Tino, Randy and especially A-Rod). Of course the rebels can still play ball and won tonight! Hopefully y’all get a chance to see it!
You can’t make changes if you’re always going to be afraid of doing something different.
Why was Bernie in CF during the first game? Why was Willie playing short? Why did Mateo get a start?
Why does anything ever happen at anytime anywhere?
Jesus Christ, this is a non issue. Ibanez has been very vocal about not wanting to be a full time DH. He wants to play the field and Grover threw him a farkin’ bone. End of story.
That’s tremendously unfair to his point, Typical.
Putting Ibanez in left field is not “trying something different”. He’s a known commodity. We know Winn is better there than Ibanez.
Now, whether it is worth the downgrade in defense to keep Ibanez happy is good question. I would hope the answer was “Ibanez will be happy anyway, put our best man out there unless he needs a rest.”
But I agree that at the pace of one every ten games… it isn’t a huge issue. But that is the very most frequently I’d want to see it.
Re: (# 253, etc.) VALDEZ’S PLAY – He took it deep in the hole. * (Nice grab.)
Fortunately, there were runners on 1st and 2nd, so he had a force at 3rd–otherwise, he’d probably have eaten it. [Dobbs was standing on the base when he took the throw; then reached down to tag the runner. (Hmm.)]
________
*Although there are actually five infield “holes,” most broadcasters, when they say “hole,” mean the one to the SS’s right.
[deleted, tone and also the worst pun in the history of USSM, intentional or not]
Wished to heck I could remember what I typed now, because there were no intentional puns anywhere in there. But one should always make note of good puns. Never know when they’ll come in handy in the future.
Anyway, I wanted to post another thought about A-Rod’s comment. How much anybody wanna bet he’s going to be doing damage control for it soon? When he said “I dont care about the fans”, I know very well that he meant the booing Seattle fans, but that wont stop some media moron from taking that and applying it to any fan. I wish that I could say that the comment wouldn’t get more press then it deserves, but I know it will.
#265 Dobbs sucks! (paraphrasing closely)
“He looks not sharp, he does”, sayeth Yoda.
Its so difficult to really know in a world of “what have you done for me lately?” how competent a player truly is…whether they have what it takes or not. I’m recalling Jose Mesa right now. 33 saves for the M’s in 1999 and only 1 in 2000. He was dismal that year and got booed for merely standing up in the bullpen. The next year he was with the Phillies and managed 42 saves….and 45 the year after that. Dobbs may not be able to swat himself in the butt with both hands after his first-at-bat-homer last year but the way these things work out he’ll be a 100 rbi guy as soon as he’s traded to the Yanks.
I’m going to quit watching Mariners’ games for the good of all. I was busy catching up on Star Wars last night (#1 still blows, imagine that) and studiously avoiding watching the M’s sink into the depths. Checked in on scores from time to time. Hmmm, down, down, down. Imagine my surprise on opening this morning’s paper.
So I won’t watch them play the Pads, who are (oh great!) hot right now. I’ll test my theory. If I don’t watch, the M’s should sweep!
The only Mariners who played here with A-Rod are Jamie Moyer, and Ibanez, Sele, and Nelson, who went away and (unfortunately) came back. That’s quite a turnover.
I get the feeling that the reason A-Rod is so short on the “M’s fans still boo” questions is because every time he comes to Seattle he gets asked it about fifty times. It’s the crazy obsession; they asked him directly during the pre-game and the post-game, and mentioned it on-air about a dozen times during the game — and not just today but every day.
Hey, if you want to boo a guy who may very well turn out to be the greatest player of all time, go for it, it’s your park too. But STOP ASKING ABOUT IT. Ask about something else. I dare you — ask him “how does it feel to play third next to a guy who plays shortstop so much worse than you do?” Heh heh.
hehe, good one, or how bout “how does it feel to be payed only a bit more than Jeter even though we all know how much better you are?”
the thing with A-Rod is he comes off so phony…if he just came out and said “i’m grateful that i got had the oportunity to get my career off to a good start here in Seattle, but its not my favorite place and i’ve moved on now” people wouldn’t like him anymore but they might hate him less. what kills me is the choir boy image he has when he has such an arrogant “i don’t owe anyone anything unless they’re paying me” attitude when it comes to the fans and organizations he’s played for….completely the opposite of Edgar. Edgar loved the fans like they were part of his “baseball family”, Rodriguez has no baseball family. i can see that he’s a nice guy and by all acounts a really good guy on a personal level, but as a player he strikes me as a mercinary trying to pass himself off as a fan favorite. makes me sick.