Toeing the Rubber

Close but no cigar, Mr. Dickey (Photo by Kelly O'Connor and used with permission)

The last time I posted was the day of Daisuke Matsuzaka’s first start since coming back. That wasn’t by design. I haven’t stopped blogging regularly for any reasons other than life having me do lifey things but  in my absence I missed a lot of baseball happenings.

I missed writing about Matt Cain’s perfect game…which I missed because it happened on the West Coast and I was sleeping. I take comfort in knowing that my cousin Angela, a Giants season ticket holder, was there and represented! I also missed writing about R.A. Dickey’s amazingly pitched on-hitter that the Mets wanted to turn into a no-hitter post game. After many viewings of the David Wright play it looked to me like a hit. Even if it wasn’t a hit, I find the idea of trying to essentially bully the official scorer into changing the ruling (and taking it all the way to Joe Torre at MLB) distasteful…especially for the Mets given how many people took issue with Johan Santana’s no-hitter coming with was a botched call on a Carlos Beltran hit. There are probably more no-hitters where you can point to questionable calls than there aren’t and you can’t change history. Also, on somewhat unrelated note, if a no-hitter or perfect game is to now be called after the fact it should have started with Armando Galarraga…so anyone else complaining about it now pales in comparison (although it should be noted that R.A. Dickey didn’t do the complaining).

I also inadvertently avoiding writing about the Washington Nationals sweeping the Red Sox, the Red Sox extending that losing streak to four games after losing the first of the series to the Miami Marlins and then the Sox going on a two-game bender, winning the Marlins series before heading to Chicago to lose the first in a three-game series with the Cubs. Since the last time I posted,  the Red Sox have lost four games and won two. So I guess I didn’t miss much after all.