This is an article from ESPN page 2 by Eric Neel about how he is settling in to watch september baseball. It is a great article entitled pennant potato. I won't give you the whole thing but highlights from his article about one night in Sept. (Last night)
"Don't tell my lifelong Methodist grandmother I said so, but I've always admired the Baptists. It's the full-body immersion thing. Complete surrender; not just sprinkled, but surrounded. That's the way to do it.
Don't tell my lifelong Methodist grandmother who, despite whatever Annie Savoy might say in my defense, would call me a blasphemer if she heard me say it, but I feel like a Baptist when it comes to baseball in September. I want to be washed in it."
"Oswalt is all elbows and angles, whipping through his delivery like a young tree bent over in a stiff wind. He finishes his curveball with a wide, comic step to the right of the hill, the way a sumo wrestler might enter a ring. And when he throws gas, the end of it is a post-pitch crouch to the left side of the mound that reminds you of Spiderman crawling up a skyscraper window. He doesn't look like much just standing there at 6 feet, 180, but he's full of drama and he makes guys buckle at the knees.
And by the way, are we watching this guy often or closely enough? Under the shadow of Clemens' historic stuff, have we noticed Oswalt putting together another quietly terrific season? Have we paid attention to the 2.84 ERA and 1.17 WHIP? Do we have to say this guy is maybe the least-talked-about great pitcher in baseball? I think we do. I think we need to take it upon ourselves to mention him more often, to work him into casual conversation, to come up with fresh, potent terms to describe his efforts, to say to the next person who asks how we're doing: "I'm fine, thanks, but not as fine as Mr. Roy Oswalt, whose work down in Houston is positively pointillist." Things like that."
"Young Astros center fielder Willy Taveras belly-flopped to catch a David Bell looper in the third inning of the Astros game. Web Gem stuff; utter disregard at the takeoff for the laws of physics and for the sentence they were about to pronounce on his body. It's unlikely that there are more of these kinds of plays come September, but they do take on a different kind of resonance in the late fall. You read more into them, you imagine they come from some hungrier, more dedicated place. I've got no research to back me up, of course, but I swear Taveras was a half-beat quicker to the jump on this ball than he would have been in April -- and I believe, because the calendar tells me it's true, that he was good for 3/8 of an inch more on his reach than he'd ever been before."
"Score tied at 1 in the ninth in Philadelphia now. Billy Wagner facing Jason Lane, one out, and Eric Bruntlett (pinch-runner for Lance Berkman) is on first. Wagner's a lefty with a decent move to first. He throws over on Bruntlett twice, to let him know he's thinking about him. Bruntlett's like, "That's nice, but I'm going just as soon as you start concentrating on my buddy Jason there." He steals second. Then he waits for another gap and steals third. That's right: Eric Bruntlett runs Billy Wagner and the Phillies into the ground. Meanwhile Jason Lane is fighting off pitches, and eventually turns the eighth pitch of the at-bat into a base hit to center and an Astros lead. Call it the Dave Roberts effect. Call it the difference between being in the hunt for a playoff spot and being the hunter. Call it one-and-a-half games up on Philadelphia (and one up on Florida) in the wild card standings at the end of the night. This is an absurd sort of extrapolation -- I know it is -- but when the Astros win the wild card, this moment, with Eric Bruntlett standing on third brushing dirt off the front of his jersey and every member of the Houston squad dancing with glee in the dugout, will be the reason why."
"Back to Boston and Trot Nixon drawing a walk off Kelvim Escobar. For years Craig Biggio has been the undisputed king of pine tar helmet muck, but Trot Nixon is making a serious bid for the crown. Trot's working in some glisten and doing some things with texture and topography the likes of which I've never seen before. I can't tell if I'm looking at a helmet, fake vomit from a joke shop, or a seventh-grader's science fair reproduction of the Kilauea lava flow."
"Must sleep. Dog has my place on the bed. I curl up on the couch and spit a little Lackey spitball on the floor, knowing he owns me. But still, I feel good. I feel washed in the blood, sweat and tears of September. I feel ready, oddly enough, to do it all again tomorrow."
Go read the whole thing if you want... very good.
"Don't tell my lifelong Methodist grandmother I said so, but I've always admired the Baptists. It's the full-body immersion thing. Complete surrender; not just sprinkled, but surrounded. That's the way to do it.
Don't tell my lifelong Methodist grandmother who, despite whatever Annie Savoy might say in my defense, would call me a blasphemer if she heard me say it, but I feel like a Baptist when it comes to baseball in September. I want to be washed in it."
"Oswalt is all elbows and angles, whipping through his delivery like a young tree bent over in a stiff wind. He finishes his curveball with a wide, comic step to the right of the hill, the way a sumo wrestler might enter a ring. And when he throws gas, the end of it is a post-pitch crouch to the left side of the mound that reminds you of Spiderman crawling up a skyscraper window. He doesn't look like much just standing there at 6 feet, 180, but he's full of drama and he makes guys buckle at the knees.
And by the way, are we watching this guy often or closely enough? Under the shadow of Clemens' historic stuff, have we noticed Oswalt putting together another quietly terrific season? Have we paid attention to the 2.84 ERA and 1.17 WHIP? Do we have to say this guy is maybe the least-talked-about great pitcher in baseball? I think we do. I think we need to take it upon ourselves to mention him more often, to work him into casual conversation, to come up with fresh, potent terms to describe his efforts, to say to the next person who asks how we're doing: "I'm fine, thanks, but not as fine as Mr. Roy Oswalt, whose work down in Houston is positively pointillist." Things like that."
"Young Astros center fielder Willy Taveras belly-flopped to catch a David Bell looper in the third inning of the Astros game. Web Gem stuff; utter disregard at the takeoff for the laws of physics and for the sentence they were about to pronounce on his body. It's unlikely that there are more of these kinds of plays come September, but they do take on a different kind of resonance in the late fall. You read more into them, you imagine they come from some hungrier, more dedicated place. I've got no research to back me up, of course, but I swear Taveras was a half-beat quicker to the jump on this ball than he would have been in April -- and I believe, because the calendar tells me it's true, that he was good for 3/8 of an inch more on his reach than he'd ever been before."
"Score tied at 1 in the ninth in Philadelphia now. Billy Wagner facing Jason Lane, one out, and Eric Bruntlett (pinch-runner for Lance Berkman) is on first. Wagner's a lefty with a decent move to first. He throws over on Bruntlett twice, to let him know he's thinking about him. Bruntlett's like, "That's nice, but I'm going just as soon as you start concentrating on my buddy Jason there." He steals second. Then he waits for another gap and steals third. That's right: Eric Bruntlett runs Billy Wagner and the Phillies into the ground. Meanwhile Jason Lane is fighting off pitches, and eventually turns the eighth pitch of the at-bat into a base hit to center and an Astros lead. Call it the Dave Roberts effect. Call it the difference between being in the hunt for a playoff spot and being the hunter. Call it one-and-a-half games up on Philadelphia (and one up on Florida) in the wild card standings at the end of the night. This is an absurd sort of extrapolation -- I know it is -- but when the Astros win the wild card, this moment, with Eric Bruntlett standing on third brushing dirt off the front of his jersey and every member of the Houston squad dancing with glee in the dugout, will be the reason why."
"Back to Boston and Trot Nixon drawing a walk off Kelvim Escobar. For years Craig Biggio has been the undisputed king of pine tar helmet muck, but Trot Nixon is making a serious bid for the crown. Trot's working in some glisten and doing some things with texture and topography the likes of which I've never seen before. I can't tell if I'm looking at a helmet, fake vomit from a joke shop, or a seventh-grader's science fair reproduction of the Kilauea lava flow."
"Must sleep. Dog has my place on the bed. I curl up on the couch and spit a little Lackey spitball on the floor, knowing he owns me. But still, I feel good. I feel washed in the blood, sweat and tears of September. I feel ready, oddly enough, to do it all again tomorrow."
Go read the whole thing if you want... very good.
