Game 87, Mariners 4, A's 2 (38-49) (cusses)

By Jason Wojciechowski on July 6, 2011 at 12:45 AM

I have some cusses about this one, aimed in part at umpires who decline to enforce the rule book because that's how they goddamn feel and aimed in part at the Mariners who cannot win without cheating.1

This is a family blog, though, so my cusses will be kept in the footnotes. Venture there if you dare.

Look, forty nine losses are a lot. The only team with more in the American League is the Royals, and their future looks a lot brighter than Oakland's. And yet through the first forty eight of those losses, I've kept my head, because a loss in baseball is just a loss. But not tonight. Tonight I have cusses.2

No call, of course, because this is sports, and fuck a rule book -- the 
umpires will call the strike zone, fielder interference, runner 
interference, balks, and every other goddamn play on the field however 
they feel like calling it on that particular day, with some built up 
bullshit common law of baseball guiding the decisions but never actually 
truly *determining* them.

  1. Ok, that's over the top. They have 43 wins on the year now. They've probably only won like 15 or 20 of them by cheating. ↩

  2. A's fans and people who watched the game don't need to read this footnote. But there are some of you who might read the blog without having watching the game. Here's what happened: the A's tied the game at two in the bottom of the ninth. In the top of the tenth, with runners on first and second and one out, Andrew Bailey got a ground ball at Jemile Weeks. The flip to second recorded one out, and then Ichiro, the runner coming from first to second, slid multiple feet from the bag, to the right side, interfering with Cliff Pennington's throw and causing him to toss the ball well past Conor Jackson, allowing the runner on second to score the go-ahead run. On replay, it was incredibly clear that Ichiro had no chance in hell of reaching out and touching the bag from where he slid -- maybe if he'd taken his slide completely perpendicular to the direction that he was running he might have brushed the side of the bag with an outstretched fingertip. ↩

TK