Playoffs for Saturday, Oct 7
San Diego at St. Louis, ESPN @ 10:09 (where did these 09s come from? Are they really that desperate to squeeze another 4m of commercials in?)(yes)
New York Yankees at Detroit, FOX @ 1:09. The A’s await the winner. Go Tigers woooo!
New York Mets at Los Angeles, FOX@ 5:05.
I gotta say, none of these pitching matchups really do it for me. Young v Suppan, Wright v Bonderman, Trachsel v Maddux. Bonderman vs the Yankees is the most interesting, but other than that… eh.
More importantly, you can still RSVP for the USSM Feed this Friday. About half the spots went in the first couple of hours, but all is not lost yet.
Friday’s October Baseball
Twins at Oakland, 1:09pm, ESPN. I thought this would be the best of the first-round series, with great matchups and two interesting teams. But the Twins may get bumped today.
Derek Jeter and his Yankees at Detroit, 5:09pm, ESPN.
USSM Post-Season Feed 06 Details and RSVP
Friday, October 13th, ~6pm-8pm+, Capitol Hill, Seattle. About 50 people total. No announced special guests, just me, Jeff, Dave, you and a good four dozen or so other Mariner fans. We’ll probably do some Q&A, I’ll have some Q&A for everyone… good times. We may podcast any Q&A we do – Jeff’s considering how we’d pull this off.
Some space still available
$22 includes all the pizza you can eat (many varieties, lots of it), salad, soda, and a tip. If you want to order beer, we’ll talk about that at the feed but it’s not included in that $22. The food’s going to be great.
Generally, spots for Feeds go really fast, so I encourage you, if you want to attend, to do so as soon as you can.
To RSVP:
If you have or can use Paypal
1. Email us and say “Put me down for 12 people, please” (your number may vary). If you’re a vegetarian or have other pizza-related requests, let us know so I can get the pizza mix optimal.
2. We say “word” or something similarly awkward.
3. Using the handy information we will send you when you submit your RSVP, use Paypal to send us $22*number of people you’re bringing.
4. I mark you down as having paid on my sheet, and we’re good.
Unless you skip #3, and then I give your spot to someone else.
If you can’t use Paypal for technical, moral, or other reasons, but still feel you’re a valued member of the USSM community like, say, super-reader Paul Covert, who we wish would come by and comment sometime
Drop us a line and we’ll see what we can do.
USSM Post-Season Feed
Friday, October 13th, 6-8+, Capitol Hill, Seattle, ~50 or so spots open. We have a location secured and mucho food and beverages will be available.
No announced special guests, just the USSM crew and you and yours. We’ll probably do some Q&A, I’ll have some Q&A for everyone… good times.
RSVP instructions, cost, etc all to be announced shortly.
Please, if you can’t go, don’t leave a comment that says “I’d love to go, but” — we’d love to have you, but I need to keep this thread clean that’s annoying.
10/5 Playoffs
Sooo, what do we have?
Detroit finally throws a good pitcher at the Yankees after yesterday’s postponement. (in progress). The Yankees not in prime time! OMG WTF!?!
Cards @ Padres, 1:05
Dodgers @ Mets, 5:05
Another day of absolutely ridiculous scheduling
Oakland @ Minnesota, 10am. For my money the most interesting series plays mid-morning here and early afternoon on that other coast. Is this really the best they could do?
Dodgers @ Mets, 1 pm.
Tigers @ Yankees, 5pm. Verlander v Mussina, should be a better game than yesterday.
San Diego @ Cardinals takes a day off. A day off!
Stupid Yankees, always getting their preferential scheduling and everything. Ridiculous.
P-I goes baseball crazy
One of the worst things about the offseason is that there are rarely any stories to read about the Mariners. I hate going to the local daily’s sports section and seeing a top story about UW’s women’s volleyball team.
Thankfully, the P-I isn’t going out without a fight. It’s a veritable cornocopia of baseball content over there today.
John Hickey: State of the Mariners. John’s overview on what the team needs to do this offseason.
Art Thiel: Lincoln on Hot Seat. Art Thiel talks to Howard Lincoln about the pressure he’s facing.
Dave Andriessen: Line-up Stability Big Goal. Andriessen gets to hear Hargrove whine about not getting to post the same line-up 162 days in a row.
Andriessen: Open Secret, M’s Need Pitching. Andriessen weighs in with the M’s need for help in the starting rotation.
Hickey: 0-11 Road Trip. For some reason, John Hickey rehashes the godawful road trip from hell.
And, if that wasn’t enough for you, John Hickey will be chatting at noon about the team.
None of the articles say a whole lot that we didn’t know already, but if you’re into quantity instead of quality, today is your day.
We go three-for-three
Yankees v Tigers. Go Tigers! Woooo!
Not-live blog, NCDS Padres @ Cardinals
1:00pm: Chris “You’re With Me, Leather” Berman is an astoundingly bad baseball guy. Going from Jon Miller to Berman is possibly the most jarring transition ever.
Also, every Fox promo I’ve seen has been all about the Cardinals. But the Padres are easily their equal. Is there really no way to market the Cardinals?
1:02: Berman manages to use “rumbling, stumbling…” for the first time. To quote Bart Simpson, “Snipers, where are you?” We do get Orel, though, for color… who immediately says that the “stats don’t show..” Peavy’s good, because his W-L record is 11-14. WHEEEE!!
1:07: YWML does a toss to the third man in the booth, the guy on the field. It takes him about 20s to do the toss.
Eckstein! “What’s that coach? Time to go to playoffs? Is it? Is it?”
1:11: Eckstein can be an ignitor. Hee hee hee.
1:15: I remember when there was controversy over whether Peavy or Tankersley would be the better pitcher. Peavy just struck out Pujols. Anyone know what Tank’s up to?
1:23: ahhh, the cat-and-mouse game between pitcher and runner, the most exciting part of baseball
1:25: that’s a sweet double play by the Cardinals there
1:34: Orel talks for a minute about Peavy’s pitches and the relative difficulty, and it makes more sense than anything I’ve heard from a color guy in ages
1:45: I know this is a little obvious, but Peavy is sweeeeeeeet. 15th-round draft pick (472nd overall) in the 1999 draft.
1:49: Berman just used “literally” incorrectly. Arrrghhh.
1:54: I wonder if tonight’s game will turn out to be a tense, low-scoring affair too. Prrroooobably not.
2:00: These Peavy-Pujols matches are awesome
2:10: ahhhh, the old NL intentional walk
2:13 The Most Offensive Commercial Ever airs again.
2:23: Carpenter can get some incredible break on his pitches, just eye-popping. Gonzalez just saw one.
2:28: Orel just delivered a long speech about how they started Branyan off with soft stuff because, as a young player, he might be anxious… Branyan’s 30 with the hitting skillset of a 35-year-old slugger. Come on. And shockingly, despite YWML’s plea for a blooper, which is about as likely as getting insight from YWML, Branyan whiffs. TTO, folks.
2:38 Pujols hit a middling grounder up the middle and for just an instant, I thought “Oh, Betancourt’s got that, easy” and then saw the Padres shortstop pull up as it was already by him. We M’s fans have it good in some ways.
2:52 Piazza! On a pitchout! With the… throw!
3:09 during the “We scored!” celebration I saw a fan in the stands with one of the old Kroc McDonald’s-style jerseys. That’s dedication, wearing that thing.
3:16: the shadows remind me of Safeco’s afternoon shadows, where pitchers with brutal breaking stuff would throw them over and over and the batters would just shake their heads and walk back to the dugout
3:24: wow, Branyan went way down to get that, that was a golf swing triple
3:27: the wheels came off Carpenter fast. Ugh.
3:34: my cat makes an appearance, suddenly interested in the game. I guess she’s a Padres fan.
3:35: ooooh, she looks pissed
3:46: I trashed YWML, but he’s been remarkably restrained so far, especially compared to what I’ve seen out of him before. I’m not that annoyed at all.
Twins-A’s Liveblog in Semi-Real Time
Minnesota is in the throes of a late-summer renaissance. The weather is 80 degrees and clear, the baseball team’s torrid play clinched a division title on the last day of the season, and even such luminaries as Jonah Keri are taking notices.
I’m here, too, haunting the sports bars, hippie co-ops and collective bookstores. And I have tickets for the whole series on the 100 level, down the third base line.
The litany of events that brought me, alone, to attend the American League division series between the Twins and Oakland is too tumultuous and bizarre to fully recount here. Nevertheless, I am pleased to report that this may be the only baseball experience I have that Jonah has not had: the pleasure of attending a game in the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome. Go baggie!
Given my recent absence from the site – you would not believe the amount of work that goes into moving out of the country, let alone other, less-enticing legal hassles – and given that my faithful bag o’ technology contains all the requisite elements of a liveblog experience, it seems clear what the correct course of action is here.
Because, after all, what do readers of a Seattle Mariner blog crave more than real-time dispatches from down the 3rd base line of a division rival’s playoff game?
It’s 1,395 miles to Seattle. I have a camera, a laptop, an ass pocket full of whiskey and internet access through my cell phone. I’m going to be inside a dome, wearing a hat.
Hit it. Read more