Oh Canada!

June 5, 2009

I’m not a fan of day games during the week.  I have this thing called a job that gets in the way of being able to watch or listen to a live day game.  And I just really like knowing that, after a mentally exhausting day at work, I can go home and lose myself in an Angels game at night.  But a day game in the EST time zone?  In my world, that comes dangerously close to the crack of dawn.

             

For most of their season, the Angels need to be at their peak at 7:00 PM PST, their typical home game time.  Today, they had to be awake and alert to play their 3rd game in Toronto at 9:30 AM PST.  If any of them had taken the field without their glove (or cup), I certainly would’ve understood.  Yikes.  Much to my relief, they either got plenty of rest or one of these: 

                                         

They got right to work and threw 3 runs up on the board in the first inning, just as they’d done the night before.  The Blue Jays were only able to piece together 2 runs out of the 7 hits John Lackey allowed them and the Angels had a 5-2 lead at the end of his 7 innings.  Okay, I’m sure you’re expecting me to let the bullpen have it right about now.

                        

But I won’t.  Darren Oliver has been one of the most reliable relievers the Angels have.  He just had a bad day, so the Jays took advantage and tied the game.  But the difference today was, Oliver’s teammates picked up the slack for him and held onto the game.  Howie Kendrick took the 9th inning as an opportunity to make up for an embarrassing base running error in Tuesday night’s game, when he lost count of the outs.  He executed a perfect bunt to get on base and then scored the winning run while the Jays were otherwise occupied with their double-play.  Nice.

                 

Don’t let the picture fool you.  I don’t think Overbay had even thrown the ball from first yet.  So, no extra innings, the Angels took two in Toronto, the Rangers lost another in New York and although I couldn’t watch all of the action until I got home from work, by lunch time today I had a smile on my face and the Angels had a win in the bag.  Now the Angels are on to Detroit while the Rangers have to take it to Boston.  The gap has closed by 1 game.  Onward and upward.

                       

Congratulations to Randy Johnson on his 300th win.  He becomes the 24th pitcher in baseball to record win #300 and only the 6th lefty to do so.  Baseball fans across the country are celebrating this amazing accomplishment.

 

Baseball…taking you to new heights.

 

 

Written by lafmyers Posted in Dailies Tagged with Angels, Blue Jays, David Oliver, Giants, Howie Kendrick, John Lackey, Randy Johnson, Toronto