Rey consider this post as sort of a belated birthday present. We shared our train ride home, with a family with Knoxville connections …
Friday night, Anne and I went to the ballgame. We were guests of John and were joined by Don. It was a reunion of last month’s Five Boroughs Ride alumni. We took MetroLink downtown and met at the Statute of Stan the Man. It was a perfect night for a ballgame.
The Cardinals were playing the Colorado Rockies. The Cards were in first place in the National League’s Central Division and the Rockies had the second worst record in the National League. Adam Wainwright was our starter.
He pitched OK. He went six innings, gave up three hits and was only down 1-2 at the top of the seventh, but he had thrown too many pitches. He then walked the lead off batter and was immediately relieved. The reliever Reyes then proceeded to walk three more batters, first loading up the bases and then walking a run home. To add insult to injury the last batter that he walked was the opposing pitcher, who had a 0.056 batting average. The Cardinal pitching staff up until Friday night had issued the fewest walks in the National League.
After this shaky start and a couple more walks the Cardinal pitchers started throwing strikes, or at least hitting the opposing team’s bats. A base clearing double brought in three more runs. This half inning continued for an hour. At the end of it, the Rockies had scored nine runs. By the end of it the Cards were on their fourth pitcher, rookie Jess Todd who was making his major-league debut. He entered with a 0.0 ERA, he started the eighth with a 16.0 ERA. On Saturday he was sent back to the minors. Even Anne putting on her rally cap couldn’t stop the Rockies from wining 11-4.
We stayed to the bitter end. All in all it was a good game. We had good friends to share the game with, who happened to have great seats and heck there was plenty of action. We quickly cruised back home on MetroLink, but the long top of the seventh was felt the next morning. The Cards lost again on Saturday night to the Rockies, by 10-1.
Pooh looks so intently intellectual there.
She was probably figuring out the pitcher’s ERU or some batting statistics. It is a very mathematical game.
Glad you got out to the ball park, looks like a nice day for a game.
Do you have tickets to the All Star game yet?
That’s ERA not ERU. An ERU is an Equivalent Residential Unit, and an abbreviation that just flows off of my fingers naturally.
Folks, my muse was just plain no longer amused.