Although punishing myself with their broadcast, I was more fixated on the “M” half of that combo.

JDR is so right about Ichiro getting doubled up. I’d say that was unsettling, but that would be insincere, as I wanted the outs.

Is this what Tex is for the rest of the year, btw?

Ya gotta feel sorry for Ichiro (even though he made the decision to re-up). One of the best who’s ever played the game having to suffer with the indignation of playing for one of the sadist franchises in baseball history.

When they had it all, they didn’t win it all, then they never had it again. Trade after pathetic trade. Bad free-agent signing after bad free-agent signing. Sending their best to win elsewhere and ending up with dog shit.

Remember when Hargrove (who was by any measure a miserable manager) quit during a 10-game winning streak. The dude couldn’t stand to win!

It reminded me of myself, I’m afraid. As a lefty and of reasonably able body, people are always shocked at how fast I get down the line to first. Because when I have to *round* the bases, it’s a nightmare. Both ankles are finished, and once I make that first turn, the sad circus begins. I always joke that past first I enter into a painful, meandering space walk. There’s just all that space, the bases look so far away, this is taking forever, and sometimes I even get lost along the way. Watching Jones, it reminded me that it’s the gruesome effort of it all that is hard to watch. Definitely a terrible send.

It’s only 19.99 for what’s left of the season – to catch Joe Girardi manage in September, it’s an irresistible deal – so I broke down and got mlb.tv. I don’t want to speak too soon, but with Yahoo appropriately suffering for the dreadful series of ads and crappy shows they tried to force down our throats last year, a lot of the dreck seems to be gone, and the overall presentation was pretty prime. I also caved and plunked down an extra five, so now I have all the features. But I started with the Away broadcast, and for the spice of life, I thought it would be novel to listen to another booth for one of our games.

It is Hell there. It is hell in Seattle. That must be baseball hell. Hellishly awful players, being announced by grindingly awful announcers, with hokey pop up ad graphics that make you want to bleed out slowly, to just the utter hell of it all. It was a place I don’t ever want to go back to again. Man, apparently baseball is grim in some other cities.

Which makes it terrible to cough up that game – because the nasty rub is that while we’re about to hit the sharp teeth of a Red Sox and Rays laden slate, other people are about to get a lot of Buck’s mutts. When you wrote black hole, I thought you meant Tex, and then I was surprised that you didn’t mention Michael Freaking Saunders, who is like eight feet tall and may have stolen a home run. Do you think that was gone if he doesn’t grab it?

and it ends with a whimper.

Wait, I guess I know how it ends.

When you’re the HAMMA, EVERYBODY looks like nails …

Robinson Cano went for x-rays after being hit in the foot in the 12th inning. The tests showed no break, but Cano was still hobbling around the clubhouse with the foot heavily wrapped.

Hopefully, no injury to insult.