A Heavenly Evening...

Wow! What a beautiful evening at the ballpark it turned out to be. It was raining all day in Chicago until about a half hour before game time, when the baseball gods decided that it was finally time for our beloved Indians to reach the .500 mark. The skies cleared, the sun briefly shined, the Tribe played an inspired game and, with the exception of a brief appearance by Satan (in the form of the home plate umpire), all was well in the world. I felt as if I had been dipped in magic waters.

Alright, alright.... maybe that's a little too dramatic. If you read yesterday's entry, you'll know how much I ripped on Sox fans for their low turnout. And you probably realized that the ballpark had almost 30,000 fans last night. What you have to take into account is that last night was "Pepsi Half Price Night" and that all those people very little to attend. Having said that, it was a good crowd.

As soon as I sat down about 15 rows right behind home plate, Ronnie took Scott Schoenehoweveryouspellit yard. I immediately heard some Tribe fans clapping and was pleasantly surprised to see an old friend of mine that had 10th row seats between the plate and third base. Because he received the tickets last minute, he had 5 (yes 5!) extra tickets. Now... typically I sit in those types of seats anyways because there are always open seats at the "Joan," but I don't usually have the ticket stub to make sure I don't get kicked out. So it was a nice surprise to be able to openly root for my Indians without fear of retaliation.

Unfortunately, at my angle I couldn't see just how much C.C. was getting squeezed by Timmy Timmons. I watched the highlights later and you really gotta wonder what was going through that ump's mind when he made those calls. Frankly, I'm just glad the Sox didn't swing at them because they were straight down the pipe.

Following up to my comment from yesterday regarding the White Sox announcers..... you gotta watch the highlights from yesterday's game on MLB.tv. Click on "Plays of the Game" (its free) and listen to Ken Harrelson announce Casey Blake's homer. Could he be worse than Monte the Colorman?

Who's the worst announcer? My vote goes to the guy wearing the hat with his own name on it. Who does that?

As you all know, the game went about as well as possible. C.C. made one mistake and settled down from his 2nd inning confrontation to pitch a beautiful game. Johnny Mac made two errors at short even though only one was actually scored an error. How much of a homer call was that? Even the Sox fans around me were complaining that that hot shot by Aaron Rowand was a play that needed to be made. Terrible call.

After the game C.C. and VMart were being interviewed by different members of the media. When they were both done, they gave each other a HUGE hug. It seemed to have all the emotion of the Maverick/Iceman embrace. I thought I overheard the following scenario:

Victor: "You can be my batterymate anytime."
C.C.: "Bullsh!t! You can be mine."

Worst pitching matchup of the series tonight. Hopefully Elarton can build on last week's rain-shortenend start. Let's see if we can sneak away with tonight's game. I'll bring all the action again tomorrow about the same time.