Yo. Who cares if Mussina almost dropped a perfect game on Boston? Yankee junkies were pretty upset on Sunday night, even though they moved up another game over the Dead Sox. (Joe Kerrigan. Ha.) There’s probably about four or five near perfect games per year, but if Barry Zito pulls the same junk, no one cares. Christ, if Derek Jeter were on the Royals, he’d just be one of those above-average guys Peter Gammons likes to call “a Johnny Damon-type player.” And damn, does he like that phrase. I think he said it about 13 times on Tuesday night. The point is, even though we love them, the Yanks get too much play just for being the Yanks.
Oh yea, did anyone watch the Expos game on Monday by the way? Didn’t think so. Move ‘em here.
But back to pitchers. The Serm is all about the Mariners this year, if you haven’t noticed. Even the editor of this section proudly sports an Ichiro t-shirt while bouncing around N street. (Note: The editor of this section also has a Griffey jersey and a Pokey Reese shirt, but we’ll them on the D/L until next year. Ah, Bob Boone, why hast though forsaken us?) So, one of the reasons we dig the Mariners is pitching. They couldn’t really pull it out last fall, but Aaron Sele, Freddy Garcia, Kazu, John Halama, et al. are just plain sick. Norm Charlton is so old he was one of the Nasty Boys for crying out loud! But he’s still pretty darn reliable.
But the truth lies in Joel Pineiro. No one hit off the 22-year old until his fourth start, and he struck out 26 on the way! Besides throwing real hard, guess what his ERA was after 5 starts? 2.08. That’s sick. I mean, the guy is younger than Danny Almonte, and could be one of those phenom burnouts, but he can ride this heat into October. And we all know what that means for the defending champs …
On a related note, did anyone check out the rooftops on Sunday? Well, that’s not really related, but it was just as crowded as the MCI center for Georgetown-Rutgers. Well, that’s not really crowded. Egad, the right similes escape us. Where’s Frank DeFord when you need him? Anyway, for prime sheep, er, people-watching, you should have been at Village A this weekend. There haven’t been that many visors in one place since Dave Matthews at Virginia Beach in ‘98. And don’t get us started on the capri pants. Imagine going to Old Navy at the Mall somewhere on Long Island. Hellish, eh?
We sure hope VCE 5th wasn’t there.
