Marinerds, etc.

(This is really about the May 16th game, just super-belated.)

I wish I had more to say about this game, but I really just don't. I went to it mostly because it was on my 16-game plan and because it was a sunny day, so it'd be good for picture-taking. As you can see from the other entry, the picture-taking worked out pretty well. I saw a whole bunch of players all over the place, caught Bartolo Colon and Scot Shields clowning around pretending to be infielders, and eventually got third base coach Dino Ebel to sign my ticket stub (since I was too far over to get Tommy Murphy).

I stationed myself at my normal spot in section 149 and chilled out for a while, and was eventually found by "two-rs-and-two-ls" from Lookout Landing, who put up with me taking pictures and babbling for a while. I did attempt to steal John Lackey's soul, but I think I failed miserably, given the way he pitched later.


Strangely, "The Angels" anagrams to "He Tangles". And "Strangely" anagrams to "Try Angels". I don't know where I'm going with this.

For a change, I decided to go down to the bullpen and catch the Many Faces of Cha Seung Baek warming up. We also got to see George Sherrill flicking sunflower seeds, and the appearance of The New Guy, Jason Davis. Lots of people congratulated Johjima on his home run from Tuesday night, and as Baek and Johjima left the bullpen to go to the field, there was a neat mix of encouragement being shouted out in both Korean and Japanese.

On the other side of the bullpen, Scot Shields was having quite a dialogue with some fan up in the stands. He really cracks me up.

Dan and I watched the first inning from the overhang over the bullpen in left field, and it was a pretty annoying inning at that. Reggie Willits led off with a double and advanced on a wild pitch to Vlad, who eventually walked. Matthews hit a single into center, and everyone ran wild, Willits scoring and Vlad going to third. For whatever reason, Sexson was staying at the bag to hold Matthews, and so Kotchman was able to hit a single to right through where he usually would have been; Guillen's throw in wasn't bad but was too late to get Vlad at the plate, so the score was 2-0 Angels by the time the dust cleared and Jose Lopez caught the next two pop flies.

Ichiro led off with a single, which was something like his 6th or 7th consecutive single, and then stole second, which was his 45th consecutive successful stolen base. Vidro grounded out and Ichiro went to third, but Ibanez hit the ball into the ground in front of home plate and it didn't go much of anywhere, so Ichiro couldn't score as Lackey charged in to field it and throw Ibanez out at first. Sexson grounded out and that was it for the Mariners baserunners until the 5th inning, as Lackey retired 14 in a row before Johjima managed a single off Lackey's shin.

I went to my actual seat after the first inning ended, and then sat there for a long string of batters being retired on both sides in mostly boring ways.

Baek settled down after the first inning, and only allowed one baserunner from the 2nd inning until the beginning of the 6th. Orlando Cabrera led off the 3rd inning with a broken-bat "single" where Ichiro ran halfway across Seattle and ended up dropping the ball. Cabrera advanced to third eventually but did not score.

The "Fact or Fiction" gimmick for the day was "MLB Player Names". The names given were Dallas Braden, Shane McShovelhead, Boone Logan, Nook Logan, Toast Friedrich, and Boof Bonser. I sort of assume most of the readers of this blog could identify who all of the real players in that list are...

A guy came up to me to ask about my camera somewhere around the 5th inning, so my notes are a little bit sparse at that point. Also, Dustin Moseley started warming up in the bottom of the 5th after Lackey took the grounder to the shins, and that distracted me as well. (In case you don't know, Dustin Moseley is my new Angels crush for the year. He's a good compliment to Rich Harden as my A's crush; now I just need a good counterpart on the Rangers. CJ Wilson, maybe. Hmm.)

Baek got out of the top of the 6th inning with a decent amount of luck. Vlad singled, and then Casey Kotchman hit into what should have been a fielder's choice, but Betancourt dropped the ball, so Vlad was safe at second and Kotchman at first. Fortunately, Erick Aybar grounded to Lopez, who was right by Kotchman at the time, and tagged Kotchman and threw to first to complete the double play.

Lackey also had a decent amount of luck in his half of the 6th. Jose Lopez started off by running out an infield bouncer to short, and then Ichiro singled to center. Vidro grounded out, advancing both the runners -- and then they did the tried-and-true approach of walking Ibanez to get to Sexson, loading the bases with one out. Usually Richie Sexson would punish someone who tried that by hitting a grand slam, but it was not to be, and instead he grounded to third, where Figgins threw the ball home to get Jose Lopez out by a mile on the force. Jose Guillen then struck out on an extremely noisy 3-2-2 pitch to end the inning, and that was pretty much it for the Mariners offense for the evening, not that there was that much of it to begin with.

The Angels added a few runs to their side in the 7th. Shea Hillenbrand led off with a single to Jose Lopez in shallow center, he just couldn't make the throw in time. Mike Napoli laid down a sacrifice bunt, but Baek astutely fielded the ball and threw Hillenbrand out at second. At this point, Eric O'Flaherty came in to pitch, and the first thing he did was walk Chone ".125" Figgins, which is never a smart thing to do, and thus it was easy for Reggie Willits to single in Napoli from second, making it 3-0. Chris Reitsma replaced O'Flaherty at that point, and I swear on the very first pitch to Orlando Cabrera, Figgins and Willits both took off for a successful double steal. Cabrera, of course, singled to left, scoring both of the aforementioned Haloheads to make it 5-0, but then Vlad hit into another one of those Jose Lopez Double Plays where he tagged up the bag and threw to first.

Lopez made a few more sweet plays, and George Sherrill pitched the 9th, and nothing much more happened -- not even for the Mariners offense, as the last 9 batters were retired by the Angels bullpen, Dustin Moseley taking the 7th and 8th and Scot Shields taking the 9th. Although, one funny play happened when Vidro grounded to Erick Aybar, who dropped the ball, and scrambled for it, and picked it up and threw it to first, and Vidro was so slow that he still didn't beat the throw. Contrast that with Jose Lopez diving to make a stop on a Gary Matthews grounder, then pretty much turning and throwing to first from his knees and making a perfect peg to beat a running Matthews. That play even became the final clip on the Great Plays Video Vault reel.

And yes, the final score was 5-0 in favor of the Angels. All in all, it really wasn't a particularly exciting game, and the field box area was so empty by the 8th inning that I ended up moving all the way to something like section 138, row 20, in the bottom of the 8th. It turned out to be a fantastic vantage point for taking pictures, but it was pretty dark by then, alas.

I'm a complete idiot and spent so long playing with the photos I took at the game tonight that I'm now dead tired and unable to write a game report right this second. You can click on any of the above little pictures to go to the photoset I put together (the first page or two is mostly Angels, the last page or two is mostly Mariners)

Note: The guy in the upper right corner is Jason Davis, who just joined the team a day or two ago. Looks almost like John Cusack, doesn't he?

I'll write more tomorrow, though to be fair, there isn't that much to say. John Lackey is really a pretty good pitcher, but we knew that already. Scot Shields still cracks me up. This was my 8th Mariners game of the season so far, and with tonight's loss, my record is now 6-2.

A couple of days ago, I had this great idea that we should get a bunch of Lookout Landing folks together at tonight's game, because

1) Felix was going to be pitching again after his stint on the DL
2) EnglishMariner, a semi-regular commenter on LL, was going to be in town from England and going to the game
3) It was "BECU Family Night", meaning the normally-$18 tickets in View Reserved would cost only $10

In reality, #1 should have been all the motivation necessary to get people to come to the park, right?

The plan was to have people buy tickets in section 320, around row 15 or so, and we'd all congregate together. And fortunately, this plan even actually worked, except for one small detail -- EnglishMariner never showed up, as far as we know. Or at least, he never sought us out. My theory is that he did show up, saw our group, and thought "Oh my gosh, I don't want to be associated with those weirdoes!" and kept to himself.

We ended up with a group of around 15 people -- PositivePaul, Marc W, Gomez, me, Bretticus, Katal, Katal's girlfriend ("Chopped Liver"), Conor Glassey and his wife Cheryl, Robert-aka-KnightofKingK, Etowncoug, and Goose. Jtopps was also there with some of his friends, and Paul's brother was also sitting in our row, and Brett's dad hung out with us for part of the game too. And amazingly, we had a great time and didn't get thrown out of the stadium or anything.

I skipped batting practice and all of my normal pregame stuff and just came straight to section 320. Yes, that's right, I actually spent a game WITHOUT MY CAMERA, just keeping score and hanging out with people.

They announced the lineups, and we spent most of the Angels lineup yelling "WHO?" at half the players. It was half a joke, and half-serious -- I mean, come on, Reggie Willits? Tommy Murphy? I later joked to Gomez that Tommy Murphy sounds more like a type of alcohol -- "Can you gimme a 40 of Tommy Murphy and a pint of Kotchman?" I think we saw about 50% of today's lineup last time I was at a game with both Marc and Paul -- in Tacoma last April when the Rainiers played the Bees.

And of course, we instantly noticed one gaping hole in the Angels lineup: no Vladimir Guerrero.

I had joked that people should "BYOK" -- bring their own K signs to hold up when Felix struck out batters -- but only Conor actually did so. He and Cheryl had Kellogg's K signs, which were immediately put to good use when Chone Figgins, the second batter of the game, was struck out.

We were all sort of apprehensive about Escobar (and I think half the gang had started him on their fantasy team that day), but apparently he didn't bring his best stuff -- or really much of any sort of stuff -- to the game today. Ichiro led off with an infield single, and we all started cheering "LET'S GO TURBO!" for Vidro's at-bat. But Vidro hit a nice line drive single into center, getting Ichiro to third. Ibanez hit a big foul fly ball caught by Figgins, and then Richie Sexson struck out, at which point I got a text message from Jeff Sullivan that said "Hi guys. Richie blows."

Jose Guillen in his Rage Against The Angels routine singled home Ichiro after that, and Paul started singing "JOSE, JOSE JOSE JOSE. JOSEEEEEEE JOSEEEEEEE" to the Ole Ole tune. And after that, Beltre grounded to third, where Chone Figgins got the ball on a bounce, pondered for a second, and then threw it over Casey Kotchman's head, so Beltre was safe at first, and Vidro even had enough time to waddle home from third. And to add insult to injury, Escobar threw a wild pitch during Johjima's at-bat, so Beltre got to second and Guillen scored, meaning it was a nice 3-0 when Felix took the mound for the second inning.

The second inning was largely uneventful game-wise, aside from Ichiro getting his second single of the night and getting his 44th consecutive stolen base. Paul and Marc disappeared for the inning to go down to the bullpen to talk to George Sherrill, and the LL guys were basically having a game thread in real life, making inappropriate pink bat jokes and such. To change the subject, I spotted a woman wearing jeans with "10101010" printed on the pockets and said "Hey, does she have binary on her butt?"

The top of the third was remarkably lame. The first two outs came pretty quickly, but then Chone Figgins walked. Orlando Cabrera hit a semi-legitimate infield single, and then Gary Matthews Jr. hit a completely retarded "single" where the ball rolled weakly up the third-base foul line and eventually just stopped in fair territory, at which point Adrian Beltre angrily picked it up (and I made a comment about how the Safeco groundskeepers weren't doing their job properly). With the bases then loaded, Felix got two strikes on Kotchman and we hoped that'd be it, but no, Kotchman hit a grounder up the middle that was deflected off Felix and that Yuniesky Betancourt got and then dropped and completely couldn't make a play on it. The Safeco scorer ruled it a single, as Shea Hillenbrand followed it up with a grounder to third and Adrian Beltre fielded it and faked a rundown with Matthews and just tagged third base for the forceout.

The bottom of the third was entirely not lame, although Kelvim Escobar might see it differently. Ibanez led off with a single to right which was first ruled an error (as it went through Maicer Izturis first). Richie walked, although Ibanez had already advanced on a wild pitch. Jose Guillen then further Raged against the Angels and doubled into left, scoring Ibanez and getting Big Richie to third. 4-1. Beltre then singled to center, scoring Richie and advancing Guillen to third. 5-1. Johjima hit a sac fly to center, scoring Guillen. 6-1. Beltre had stolen second during Johjima's at-bat, and stole third during Betancourt's, sliding headfirst into the base, so I jokingly got everyone to yell "STEAL HOME! [CLAP CLAP] STEAL HOME! [CLAP CLAP]". Of course, that wasn't necessary, as even Betancourt could hit Escobar, and singled to bring Beltre home. 7-1. And that was it for Escobar, routed after only two and a third innings.

Hector Carrasco (whose name still invokes the Rakuten Golden Eagles mascot to me) came in to pitch after that, and Jose Lopez takes the first pitch he sees and wallops it into the Angels' bullpen. I mean, like, we all get up at the first crack of the bat and watch that ball sail out there, over Reggie Willits's head... and I'm just standing there in disbelief with my hand on my forehead like "I BENCHED HIM TODAY ARRRGGGHH", while everyone around me is celebrating as the first strains of Parliament Funkadelic come blasting down from the speaker right above us. Eventually I realize that it's okay to be an idiot in this case and we all start high-fiving each other (and virtual high-fiving guys like Jeremy and Marc and all who are sitting a few rows away). Besides, a 9-1 lead is pretty sweet.

Ichiro singled after that, making him 3-for-3 on the day, and at that moment Bretticus realizes that 1) there's only one out and one batter left before the Mariners bat around, and 2) he has one of the stupid vertical scorecard books where they don't have a tenth inning to extend into when your lineup bats around. So he's like "It's okay, Vidro's going to ground into a double play," but, no, Vidro walks. With Ibanez up, everyone's like "Well, maybe Ibanez will ground into a double play?" and then someone, I forget who, came up with the brilliant idea of The New Double Play Twins, Vidro and Ibanez -- that is, the Ground Into Double Play Twins.

Unfortunately, Ibanez grounds into what looks like a 4-6-3 double play, only it turns into a "4-6-E" play instead, as Orlando Cabrera basically eats the ball at second and makes a wide throw to first. Since a double play is not assumed, that's really not an error. Richie Sexson strikes out after that, though I wrote it down as "K?" because he pretty much watched that ball go by like "What?"

I helpfully point out that Brett doesn't actually have to worry about the scorecard not having a 10th inning, because there's no way the Mariners will lose this game at this point, so he doesn't actually need the 9th inning column for the home team. Then I realize that I've probably just jinxed the team horribly, and perhaps I shouldn't have said that, except the reply was "No, I mean, what will we do if they bat around again?"

We got All-Star Ballots sometime around then, which was of course a lot of fun to joke about with the group. Gomez was talking about the WPA All-Stars ("Does that mean we have to vote for Barry Bonds?"), while I was meanwhile filling mine out with various themes, such as "The 15 worst players on the ballot, and Sal Fasano", or "Names ending in -er and -y", which actually gets you a decent lineup.

The Angels did some run-scoring stuff in the top of the 4th -- Felix ended up loading the bases on an Izturis single and a Napoli double, then walking Willits after striking out Murphy. So he struck out Chone Figgins (as we're all yelling things like "COME ON, YOU CAN STRIKE OUT A GUY NAMED CHOWN-EE, GODDAMNIT"), but then Orlando Cabrera hit a single up through Betancourt's glove, scoring two runs, and Felix got taken out of the game after 78 pitches, with the score 9-3. We all got up and applauded. Sean White came in to pitch for the Mariners.

It was already quarter to 9pm at that point, and we hadn't even gotten through 4 innings, so I was almost worried that we'd all be stuck at the stadium until 11pm.

I shouldn't have worried.

Sean White literally retired 13 batters in a row. Infact, I sort of zoned out for most of his time pitching, because well, the Angels weren't doing much, and to be fair, neither were the Mariners. The LL crowd were using most of that time to actually just talk about random crap, as if we were in a game thread wasting time while a boring part of the game was happening. Which is exactly what we were doing, as it were. Infact, the most exciting thing that happened during White's turn on the mound was a Casey Kotchman infield fly to the mound, which White caught barehanded and threw to first. It was cute.

Meanwhile, Kenji Johjima served up another FUNK BLAST for us all -- I'm almost thinking we should rename Section 151, Row 35 as "Kenji's Korner", because goddamn, every home run he hits at Safeco seems to go to that very spot.

Ichiro got up to 4-for-4 during his next at-bat. Vidro walked. There was yet another wild pitch during Ibanez's at-bat -- the third one of the evening for the Angels, and at this point I was vaguely wondering whether some of those weren't really passed balls on Napoli. I don't really trust the Safeco scorers in general. Raul struck out and Richie grounded out to end the inning, and then THE HYDRO RACES STARTED OH BOY OH JOY! I hate the Hydros (Gomez noted, "It's Deanna's favorite part of the game!"), but Paul basically spent the entire race yelling "YELLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW" right in my ear. I don't even remember what won, to be honest.

The Angels and Mariners both swapped out most of their lineups between the 5th and 7th innings. The Angels basically put in the rest of the Salt Lake 2006 lineup in the bottom of the 5th; Willits moved to center, Erick Aybar came in at short, Robb Quinlan (!) came in for left field, and Kendry Morales replaced Kotchman at first. The Mariners followed suit in the 7th, with Ben Broussard coming in for left field, Jason Ellison coming in for right field, and a bit later, Willie Bloomquist replaced Ichiro in center field. (The speaker announced the "defensive replacement" and we all started booing loudly, much to either the complete amusement or chagrin of the surrounding fans.) Ellison and Broussard even actually got at-bats later on! Wow!

There was some more White ownage, and Chris "Booty Check" Bootcheck, another guy I was pretty familiar with from the Salt Lake team, came out to pitch, and he was just a strike-throwing machine in the 6th, though he started off the 7th by hitting Lopez with a pitch. A wild pitch during Ichiro's at-bat (Goose said, "Was that the FOURTH one tonight?") moved Lopez to second, where he scored when Ichiro singled, amidst our cheers of "FIVE FOR FIVE! FIVE FOR FIVE!" Vidro, the GIDP Twin, grounded into a fielder's choice after that, and some fly outs to Tommy Murphy's high socks in right field ended the inning. In the meantime, people had started doing the wave, and Conor, whose blog is called "Stop The Wave", made a point of sitting there very grumpily, as the rest of us were yelling things like "ANGELS FANS LIKE THE WAVE" and "JEFF WEAVER LIKES THE WAVE" and stuff like that.

Towards the end of the 8th inning, we all noticed there was a guy warming up in the bullpen, but we couldn't quite tell who it was. I have fairly good vision, so I was like "Huh... tall right-handed guy with a uniform number ending in 0?" But we knew it wasn't Putz -- too skinny -- so we figured it had to be the new guy, Jason Davis, just acquired from Cleveland. An 11-3 lead was a pretty good place to try him out, too. What was sort of surprising to all of us was that he was wearing #50, Jamie Moyer's old number. I think a lot of us have different ideas about which numbers are sacred on the Mariners -- like #11, and #24, and maybe even #14 -- but I guess if Dan Wilson's #6 could be re-issued, then so can Jamie's #50.

Either way, the ninth inning went pretty quickly. Napoli hit a pop fly out to first, and Tommy Murphy hit a "double" up the left field line, which basically barely bounced fair, then almost bounced into the stands, where a fan failed to grab it, and it rolled back on the field. I'm not sure whether it was called a ground rule double or not, but Davis struck out Reggie Willits after that, and I stood up.

"HEY GUYS, IT'S THE LAST OUT OF THE GAME," I said.

Everyone's like "Oh yeah. Huh."

I mean, usually the last out of the game involves lots of music over the loudspeaker and a big "UP ON YOUR FEET!!" on the left-field scoreboard, but I guess even the scoreboard operators hadn't noticed. (They didn't actually reflect the defensive changes until a half-inning later earlier in the game either, so.) So we all got up and pretended to sing Zombie Nation, and then Chone Figgins grounded out to first, Davis covering the bag, which was about as anti-climactic an ending as one could possibly imagine.

But hey, the Mariners won 11-3, Felix is back, and we managed to get a whole bunch of Lookout Landing folks to the game and we all had a blast. A funk blast, even. The funny part is that we still have absolutely no idea what happened to EnglishMariner. But either way, we're surely going to do this again sometime, because it was a lot of fun.

Mariners 2, Angels 0

I've been saying all week that the Mariners didn't need mojo or any of that crap, they needed ME. And I've been at four Mariners games in the last week, and they won them all. Coincidence? I think not!

Tonight, I traded in a bunch of season tickets that I won't be able to use while I'm in Japan, and got eight of the cheap Monday $10 view reserved seats, and basically sort of had a mini-party at the stadium to celebrate various things in a particular circle of friends; out-of-town guests, new jobs, early birthdays, etc. So we sat way up and out in the stands, near Lookout Landing, but that was okay because then we could switch seats and people could drink beer and not worry about disturbing anyone.

The downside was that I didn't do any of my typical pre-game stuff like watching BP or taking pictures of pitchers warming up or whatnot; the upside was that I got to hang out with a whole bunch of people who I probably won't see for at least a month, and I got to share a game of baseball with them, and even better, I got to share a great game that involved Felix pitching a gem and the Mariners breaking their goddamn divisional losing streak.

Every now and then it's nice to see how new people react to the Safeco environment, which reminds me that it really does cater well to a general audience, even if I personally may be bored and jaded by it all. I'm so sick of the hat trick and the various music clips and the hydro races and whatnot. But when Raul Ibanez came up to the plate and Werewolves of London started playing, and about half our group cracked up and the other half started howling "RAUUUUUUUL", I couldn't help but laugh as well. I hate the hydros, but my friends were all really into it, especially when two of them banged into each other and the third one won. Half of them actually followed the stupid Hat Trick, and one of them inadvertantly took himself on a three-inning tour of Safeco Field while hunting for vegetarian food, but had a great time doing so. In some ways I suppose I was remiss in my duty as a host by not giving a tour of the stadium, but again, showing off Safeco at this point is sort of like showing off my house -- it's hard to remember what parts would be interesting to people who aren't there all the time.

There's really not a lot that I have to say about the game, honestly. I mean, it started at 7:05pm and it was over at 8:59pm. There were no pitching changes; Felix pitched the complete game on 95 pitches and Escobar pitched a complete game on 106 pitches. Five out of the eight innings for the Mariners were 1-2-3, and six out of the nine innings for the Angels were 1-2-3. There were no walks. There were no home runs. There was, basically, no bullshit, and it really was a nice change.

There was only one big inning, and that was the fourth for the Mariners. After Doyle flew out, Beltre bounced a ball pretty deep in the hole and ran it out, beating the throw to first by a bit. Ibanez then hit a single to right, and Beltre got to third; Richie Sexson hit the ball to left field, which looked really funky from where we were -- we could tell from the arc that it wasn't a homer, and we could watch Juan Rivera tracking it, and then we could see it bounce off the wall over his head and see him take a weird angle to send it back in, and it was really kind of cool. Broussard struck out -- I'm liking Jeff's theory on why Broussard strikes out a lot -- and then Johjima should have grounded out, but instead ended up safe on first after Orlando Cabrera booted it, and Ibanez scored on that, and then Jose Lopez struck out, and that was about it for exciting offense for either side.

There were a few nonstandard plays I got to write down, though -- the 6-3-2 in the first inning when Vlad Guerrero grounded to Willie Bloomquist, whose throw drew Richie off the bag, but Richie fired the ball home in time to catch Maicer Izturis. And later on Ichiro ended up getting caught out on a close 7-4 play stretching a single to a double.

You know, I'm one of the people who isn't a flat-out Willie-hater, but I was really disappointed to see him at shortstop today with Felix on the mound; it just didn't make sense to me, and he booted several plays that could have been double plays instead of fielder's choices, or outs instead of singles, and at one point one of those plays was called an error on Jose Lopez when it really did look like a throwing error on Bloomquist to me. I know Betancourt's not infallible, but he's the closest thing to a superhuman shortstop I've ever seen, and I'd just rather see him out there behind a groundballer like Felix.

Besides, I wanted my friends to get to see Yuniesky Betancourt, since I'd been talking up how they'd get to see our promising young guys in Lopez, Betancourt, Snelling, and Felix, and only three out of the four were there for most of the game.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that in the Beyond the Baselines thingy, Chris Snelling's trivia was "Favorite movie: Star Wars".

Anyway, I'm glad the damn losing streak is over. I won't be able to make it to another game at Safeco until the series against the A's in late September, so this was a nice note to go out on. It's sort of a shame, since I'd love to see JW #56 take on JW #56 tomorrow night in the Epic Jered-Jarrod Battle, but I've just got too much stuff to take care of.

Scot Shields walked into the clubhouse and sat down at his locker, getting ready to clean it out for the final time of the year. Most of the team was around, chatting about plans in the offseason, complaining about aches, pains, umpires, or whatnot. Sitting at a table behind him was Darin Erstad, Garret Anderson, and Steve Finley, speaking in hushed, conspiratorial voices.

He could occasionally hear various phrases coming from their table, and they weren't making much sense, so finally his curiosity got the best of him and he walked over and sat down.

"You guys gonna let me know what the hell you're talking about?" he asked.

"Shh, man!" said Garret.

"Funny you should put it that way," said Erstad quietly.

"What way?" Shields replied in a low tone.

"The 'hell'." Erstad looked really serious. "Scotty, we think we figured out how the White Sox managed to beat us. It's some seriously scary shit."

"Uh, okay," started Shields, a skeptical look on his face.

Finley grimaced. "No, really, we have. See, we're the Angels, right? And what's the only thing that can even begin to come close to defeating an Angel?"

Shields stared. "The Blue Jays? We went 1-5 against them this year..."

Erstad blinked. "No, dude, think more evil."

"Um, how about the Devil Rays? We were 4-5 against them..."

Finley had a strange, distant half-smile on his face. "The 'Devil' Rays... He's getting closer, guys. Think biblical, Scot. Think, like, the heavens and hellfire and..."

Shields groaned. "Oh, don't tell me you think the White Sox beat us because they've become a bunch of demons or something."

Garret shrugged. "It's written all over the place, man. First, did you see the commercials they did this year? They even have one where Aaron Rowand dies slamming into the outfield wall and Satan immediately appears to claim his soul. It's actually *in* their contracts."



"Guys, that's a dude in a devil costume."

Finley interjected. "Okay, wait, but how else do you explain how A.J.Pierzynski getting all those calls from the umps? That was really obviously the work of a greater evil force out there. I mean, once, the 'third strike in the dirt', maybe that's a fluke. Twice, that catcher's interference on me... that's a little weirder. But *three times* he was in the midst of controversial calls and came out shining like a little--"

"Don't say it."

"All right. But, really... most of those players sold their souls to the devil a long time ago. It's the only explanation. I know you spend most of your time way out in the bullpen, but have you taken a good look at Mark Buehrle lately?"

Shields started to stand up. "You people are nuts."

Garret held out a piece of paper. "And look at this."

"What?"

"You know how Satanists always have ways of writing secret messages in text, by rearranging the letters and all? Well, we noticed some mighty odd things about that team."

Shields looked at the paper, and saw several White Sox names rearranged.

OZZIE GUILLEN = I NOZZLE GUILE

JOSE ARIEL CONTRERAS = SATAN, LOSER REJOICER

FREDDY ANTONIO GARCIA = GORY AID FOR DANTE IN CA

SCOTT ERIC PODSEDNIK = I DOCK TINTED CORPSES

"Not bad," said Shields. "But you know, that game goes both ways."

Garret looked confused. "Huh?"

"Well, for example, if you rearrange 'Darin Erstad'..." started Shields, as he scribbled on the paper. "You can get some pretty descriptive things too, eh?" He handed the paper to Erstad. "I'll see the three of you next year. Don't fall into any fiery pits of Hell between now and Spring Training, 'kay?" He walked off.

Erstad read the paper and turned redder than a pair of Thunderstix.

Finley glanced at it and didn't seem to know whether to laugh or cry. "The three of us. 'A NERDS TRIAD', huh?"

"Shut up," said Erstad.