Monthly Archives: July 2012

July 9, 2012 · 3:40 pm

Ian Kinsler Is Not Afraid of Lightning and Other Assorted Truths

(Eh, about the ads you are now seeing all over my blog, MLB.com is making some changes, it seems.  For the moment, please use your fabulous talent for blocking things out and enjoy my witty posts, m’kay?)

By now, you’ve probably all seen the video of the Rangers and Twins being shocked on the field by a massive thunder clap.  But if you live under a rock/like to spend your weekends sleeping (understandable), here it is one more time.

The thing that really cracked me up, aside from the obvious, was the wide shot, where you can see the entire infield jump.  Entire, that is, other than Ian Kinsler, who is apparently completely unaffected.  It’s not even that he’s not afraid of lightning, he must not be afraid of anything.  Because if I were on the field, I think my first thoughts would have been zombie apocalypse/terrorist attack/Bud Selig’s helicopter landing on the field.  And in any of those situations, I would have been scared out of my mind.  Not Kins.  A few minutes later, he’s still laughing about it on the field.

Move over, Jeff Kent.  We have a new MLB player who would be perfect for Survivor.

In other news, this is the 83rd annual MLB All Star Game and this year was also the 84th annual Academy Awards.  Which means someone thought of those two things right around the same time.  Which, I can’t lie, makes me kind of irrationally happy.

Have to go now.  There are many photos of badly-dressed baseball players on Media Day to look at before the Ridiculously Long Home Run Derby kicks off in a few hours.   I don’t know who I’m rooting for.  I detest the Home Run Derby almost as much as I detest the winners they choose at the Academy Awards.  Still, I watch both from beginning to end.  The mysteries of the world are infinite.

Diamond Girl

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July 8, 2012 · 7:43 pm

Dear First Half, In the Style of Taylor Swift

(FYI, if we’re playing celebrity wars here, I side with John Mayer in the John Mayer-Taylor Swift War.  If you have no idea what this is all about, watch this song that Taylor Swift wrote to her, um, ex John Mayer and then come back here.)

So!  Dear First Half:

Long were the nights when you were always day games

Counting my flipflopped footsteps,
Praying the floor won’t fall through, again
My mother accused me of losing my mind (oh yes, she did)
But I swore I was fine, you paint me a blue sky
And go back and turn it to a rain delay
And I lived in your baseball game,
But you changed the rules every day
Wondering which version of you I might get on the phone
Tonight, well I stopped picking up, and this blog post is to let you know why.

Dear First Half, I see it all now that you’re gone
Don’t you think I was too loyal to be messed with?
The girl in the sparkly flipflops, cried the whole way home, I should’ve known

Well maybe it’s me and my blind optimism to blame
Maybe it’s you and your sick need to give first place and then take it away
And you’ll add my name to your long list of bandwagon fans who don’t understand
And I’ll look back and regret how I ignored when they said “become a football fan as fast as you can”

Dear First Half, I see it all now that you’re gone
Don’t you think I was too loyal to be messed with?
The girl in the sparkly flipflops, cried the whole way home

Dear First Half, I see it all, now it was wrong
Don’t you think Diamond Girl is too loyal
To be played by your dark twisted games, when I loved you so?
I should’ve known

You are an expert at sorry,
And keeping the half games too complicated to understand
Never impressed by me sitting through extra innings
All the fans that you’ve run dry
Have tired, lifeless voices from cheering too much
‘Cause you burned them out
But I took your matches before fire could catch me,
So don’t look now, I’m shining like Fireworks Night at the Ballpark over your sad, empty stadium

Dear First Half, I see it all now that you’re gone
Don’t you think I was too loyal to be messed with?
The girl in the flipflops, cried the whole way home.

I see it all now that you’re gone
Don’t you think I was too loyal to be messed with?
The girl in the sparkly flipflops wrote you a blog post
You should’ve known, you should’ve known
Don’t you think I was too loyal? You should’ve known

xoxo,

Diamond Girl

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July 7, 2012 · 7:43 pm

5 Potential Better Closers for the Giants

5.  Neftali Feliz.   To save him from Jon Daniels’ clutches.  Jon Daniels who pokes him in the back with a knife and makes him start and whatever, when Neftali really just wants to close.  No, I have never read anything to this effect, but I can just intuit these things, you know?

4.  Ryan Gosling.  Because he’s good at everything.  He even saves lives.  Not that I read the celeb gossip columns or anything.

3.  LeBron James.  He no longer needs to win rings and prove The Haters wrong, so maybe he should get into baseball.  Closing, specifically.  For the Giants, most specifically.  I hear he’s a great, selfless clubhouse personality, too.

2.  Anyone Billy Beane picks.  Because Billy Beane loves closers.  Courtesy of Moneyball: “You could take a slightly above average pitcher and drop him into the closer’s role, let him accumulate some gaudy number of saves, and then sell him off.  You could, in essence, buy a stock, pump into up with false publicity, and sell it off for much more than you’d paid for it.  Billy Beane had already done it twice, and assumed he could do so over and over.”

1.  Santiago Casilla.  Looking like an increasingly appealing option, after making this list.

Casilla’s had a bad couple little stretch and is now basically unavailable with a blister on his finger.  The masses of craz—I mean, wonderful fans are calling for Sergio Romo to be handed the closer job and while I love Romo, I, um, do not agree.  Even aside from Romo’s recurring injury problems, which could make the job problematic for him, I think Casilla deserves a little benefit of the doubt.

Also, he bats.

If I’d proposed a year or two ago that he would make a fantastic closer, you would have laughed at me.  Every one of you.  Reason I didn’t propose it is that I, too, would have laughed.  So just now I propose that we all just sit back and give Casilla a moment.  Or two.  Or three.  And use now-free moments to meditate on the unfairness of pitching on a team that doesn’t reallyever hit.  Ryan Vogelsong is probably a saint.

In other news, the Rangers have an even more ridiculous number of All Stars than the Giants.

 

Diamond Girl

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July 5, 2012 · 12:22 pm

A Chance to Win Diamond Girl’s Firstborn!

How can you win the awesome prize stated in the title?  By voting for Yu, of course.  You have until 1:00 PT to vote – so about 40 minutes- and all you have to do is:  tweet the hashtag #VoteYu (yep, that counts as a vote) or vote the good old-fashioned way right here or text “A2″ to 89269.

If you do this and tell me you did by messaging me on Pinterest or whatever, you will be entered to win my theoretical firstborn.  Terms and conditions apply.  See the cupcake shop around the corner for details.

Diamond Girl

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July 4, 2012 · 6:59 pm

Fun In DC. Just Kidding, Not Fun At All.

DC has not treated us well.  It’s not that, big picture-wise, things are that bad.  The Giants are tied with the Dodgers for first place with a few days to go until the All Star Break and they’re currently on track for a 90-win season.  Brandon Crawford is edging in on .250 and The Pablo Sandoval of the Cute Nickname hit a single, a double and a pretty fab homer.  We have a million and one All Stars on our team, for Pete’s sake.  Things are looking up.

Well, no.  Not exactly.  Yesterday, Tim Lincecum got shelled and basically looked like a drowned animal out there and then Madison took the mound today and things were not a lot better.  See, I know that the ball flies well in hot weather but isn’t that supposed to apply to, um, both sides?  Perhaps in the nation’s capital all the rules change.  Because the Nationals are hotter than hot at this moment and holding onto the best record in the National League.  Get those conspiracy theories about the Nationals having the same name as the National League out of your system.  Done?  Okay.  Let’s move on.

Anyhows, this was a bad moment to head to DC.  The weather is dismal and the Nats are very, very good.  The Giants are showing signs of fading.  Before you snap at me, I don’t mean fading for good.  Just fading as in can-all-25-of-us-go-to-the-All-Star-Game-already kind of fading.  It’s like the last week of school.  Everyone wants to get to the good stuff.  Good stuff being the second half.  Because I have a rather fantastic feeling about the second half.

But first, all 25 of them need to go to the All Star Game.

And first first, there’s one more game in DC, which we can just skip over and pretend isn’t happening, and then a series at PNC Park.  Them Pirates currently lead the NL Central (and no, they do not have the same name as the league so, see, that was irrational) by half a game and are 7-3 in their last 10.  Read: pretty hot.  This is going to be fu-un.

Seriously, though, to those of you who are screaming that the Giants have to trade for a pitcher, ssshhh.  The pitching is just fine, en général (except when they face the, eh, aptly named Nationals) and as for Lincecum, we probably shouldn’t get rid of him just yet.  Or that might go down in history as the worst trade ever, right behind Melky for J-Sanch.  Oh burn, KC.  Oh burn.

Also!  Did you know that the Royals do not play in Kansas?  Yeah.  Fun fact of the day.  Also, Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory is the only factory in that world that mixes its chocolate by waterfall.  Just worth noting.

Diamond Girl

p.s.  I almost forgot… happy 4th, people!  I may or may not have said earlier today that I wanted to watch fireworks on TV, because I like the celebrations from around the world.  Because, duh, they celebrate American Independence Day around the word.  (May or may not have been thinking of New Year’s Eve.)

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