Yeah, we need Roy back. I mean, in 1923 he discovered the first dinosaur nest in that very same Gobi Desert, thereby proving conclusively that dinosaurs laid eggs – even though he was never able to determine which came first.

And he got the name wrong too. He called ‘em Protoceratops, and those steenking Linnaens swooped in around 1995 and declared ‘em Oviraptors. These people have no, repeat, no, poetry in their souls.

I cannot rationally describe my excitement for tonight’s Yankees-Orioles game. Four game series coming off of taking two-of-three in New York over the weekend*. One game back in the division race. Jason Hammel makes his first start coming off of the disabled list. Oh, and it’s the Cal Ripken Statue unveiling on the seventeenth anniversary of 2131 (and the sixteenth anniversary of Eddie Murray’s 500th homer).

Only a few more hours of work…

*I was at Sunday’s game in Yankee Stadium. Sitting in the bleachers. Wearing Orioles gear. The fans around me couldn’t have been any nicer. I was absolutely stunned, though in a good way.

It’s nice.

Talk about a dismemberment. They came, they scored, they gave up nothing, and they swept. They even bonked the A’s best pitcher on their way to the bus. (Thank goodness he seems to be ok). There were no positives for the A’s in that 3 game series, except that McCarthy does not appear to be seriously hurt. Whether he has any concussion symptoms is still TBD.

Now the A’s leave town to face the Mariners who are only 4 games below .500. That series starts on Friday, with the King v. Mix-a-Lot. Griffin has the stuff to hold the Mariners down, if he executes. The King does well against the A’s usually, though he had 1 bad start in April, surrendering 6 ER’s. He only gave up 4 runs combined in his other 3 starts against the A’s this year.

Bottom line is the Angels showed what a veteran team can do when their pitching staff is firing and their offense takes professional at-bats up and down the lineup. The A’s simply need to play better against the Mariners and regain their momentum.

Here in Macondo, though, we can distinguish between the mathematical determination of the frequency of the redshift and the sinking feeling of having seen it all many times during the alternative spaced time discontinuum of the Feesh’s lost planet 2012 season. Many of the same digits and weird little squiggles used to calculate those shifts are also used to determine the position of the redshifting strange attractor, by the way. Looking as it does like the mothership from Close Encounters, inverted with its bristles shaved off, the nascent ability of Macondo Banana Massacre Field to navigate all sorts of reality planes with equal ineffectuality has always been apparent to any locals who have been waiting all season for (a) the Feesh to play as if they hadn’t landed on a much more massive planet than the one they devolved on without their anti-gravity shoes and (b) for the rows of empty shops the management of said stadium actually forgot to lease out over last weenter to fill with merchants suicidal enough to pay Scrooge McLoria rents in a bottom-of-the-feedbag economy.

Last night, Slobbering Ozzie had the privilege of introducing another of the Feesh’s ascending crop of wannabe peetchers from the minors to the joys of beeg league heeting. Last night it was Tom (or Tim, or Ted, or whatever) Koehler, who sliced and diced his way through a 1-2-3 seexth to get clobbered during a 1-2-3-4 (runs) seventh. So it goes. Well, like Crash Davis says, those big league hitters are gonna light you up pretty good for a while. Deal with it.

I still have no idea what the fat panda was complaining about – did McDonald call him fat?

Anyhow, the Yanks owe a big thank you to Elliot Johnson, who committed two major errors, one defensive and one offensive. Defensively, he committed the error that allowed two unearned runs to score for the Yanks. Offensively, he seemingly called for a squeeze play on his own with Keppinger on 3rd with one out. The problem is that no one else knew about it. Keppinger did not break for home, and Maddon looked perplexed in the dugout. The Rays basically gave an out away, and that runner was ultimately stranded in third. I like Elliot Johnson, but yesterday was not his night.

Not the Panda’s finest moment during the SF/ARI game.

Another astonishing fact: Eight Nats players have hit their first MLB HR this year (Harper, Moore, Lombardozzi, Brown, Solano, Strasburg, Jordan Zimmermann and Gio Gonzalez). That has to be some kind of record