Those 3 games were terrific. Even losing two, I had a smile on my face almost every minute. Just really good baseball. I still think the highlight was Timmy’s performance. Incredible “want to” as the pro bullriders say, tough, tough performance. I hadn’t realized he’d lost 33 pounds over the off-season. That much weight loss will definitely slow you down. Here’s hoping that performance will help him bounce back for the second half this year.

Off to the mountains for 4 in Denver. Messrs. Strasburg, G. Gonzalez, Zimmermann and E. Jackson have pitched quite well at low altitudes; we shall see how they fare a mile above sea level.

Ain;’t that the truth. A league worst .491 OPS and 10 runs in their last six games. But why?

6/24: Ross Detweiler, 3.09 ERA
6/23: Edwin Jackson, 2.91 ERA
6/22: Jordan Zimmerman, 2.89 ERA
6/20: Dillon Gee, 4.27 ERA
6/19: Johan Santana, 3.00 ERA
6/18: R.A. Dickey, 2.31 ERA

That’s some pretty difficult pitching to face. 2-4, for a young team, against that kind of pitching? We’ll take it. Dillon is probably the only inexcusable one, but they did score the most runs off of him in the last week (3!).

The Giants vs Dodgers series will be must watching this week for NL fans and for fans of playoff bound teams in the AL.

The A’s showed how much they’ve improved from last year due largely to the trades of Gio and Cahill. They still are not contenders, but they are more fun to watch than the 2011 version, unless they are slumping. But still, .500 is as good as it will get for these guys. At least we are being spared daily observation of the regression of Kurt Suzuki, a sad tale of woe for a hard-working catcher who has not learned to make adjustments at the plate, shorten his swing, and maintain his balance.

Discuss.

Um….

Yes, well. The Feesh awakened from their long June slumber, kinda like Robert de Niro and will prolly doze right back orf again like he did tonight, and behind some terrific pitching by Mark Buehrle – who wasn’t punished for it, for a change – and perhaps inspired by the repeated Debby-related monsoon downpours we’ve been enjoying here in Macondo, spilled nine runs across the plate and took the rubber game (just as Tennessee was passing a law that says you can’t show kids rubbers in sex ignoration class) from the Feather Lice.

More important, though, I have to note the passing on Saturday of Lonesome George, the last living Pinta Island giant saddleback tortoise, in Puerto Ayora, Galapagos Islands. I actually scratched George’s chin in his pen at the Darwin Research Center (Darwin being another aspect of enlightenment that Tennessee once tried to ban from its blighted classrooms). He seemed to like it. Many attempts were made to mate George with closely related female saddlebacks from nearby islands, but he showed little interest in them until – and this is true; you could look it up – a graduate student from Switzerland attempted to stimulate him manually (I searched YouTube in vain for the video – ah well). She must have been hot, because he then began clumsily mounting some of those females – the grad student reported that he didn’t really seem to know what he was doing, which made me wish I had gone to grad school in Switzerland myself, and hell, I could always use another degree – but unfortunately and the eggs laid by the females with whom he somehow managed the task all turned out to be infertile. I guess you could say that Lonesome George carried the termination of his line within him like some kid of pledge – which is a lot like the way the Feesh are playing out their season, you know?

Moronic comment of the day: local sportscaster saying that the Mets-Yanks game last night lived up to the hype. I think he confused “exciting if sloppy game” with “sterling pitching match-up!”

Just imagine if the Yanks played the Marlins or Phils instead of that second series against the Braves. (What was up with that, anyway?)

Tiffany wore a perplexed expression on her face: “Craig the Stanley Cup… never mind…”

How could you Craig, we’re still on the Mend…..148 years later and we have not forgotten….well, at least wikipedia hasn’t

Unfortunately, I feel pretty sure I’ll get another chance to submit it.