Starting Five

1. You Can’t Spell Uribe Without R-B-I”

With his team trailing 3-2 in the bottom of the 8th inning in Game 4 of the NLDS and teammate Yasiel Puig on second after a leadoff double, Juan Uribe tomahawks –ironic — a 2-2 offering from David Carpenter into the left-field stands at Dodger Stadium. 4-3, you lose. Thoughts:

–You are Brave manager Fredi Gonzalez, you have the most dominant closer in baseball right now, Craig Kimbrel, and you need six outs to book this series’ return flight to Turner Field for Game 5. Do you flout convention and bring in Kimbrel in the eighth to face Puig and Uribe, Nos. 5 and 6 in the lineup, and shut down the biggest threat? Or do you go by the book? Gonzalez played it conservatively and Kimbrel, as it turns out, never entered the contest. Both he and Gonzalez will have six months to stew about it.

–The footage of Kimbrel standing on the mound after Uribe’s blast, hands on hips with a “Well, what would you like me to do now?” scowl on his face, will be etched in my memory for quite some time.

–The Dodgers need to play the Tampa Bay Rays in the World Series so that if they win in St. Petersburg they can celebrate in the devil ray tank out beyond centerfield.

–As a World Series preview –and the Dodgers will advance– Sports Illustrated needs to put Vin Scully, who is 85 and in his 64th mellifluous season with the Dodgers, on the cover with Yasiel Puig, who is 22 and a Dodger rookie. You can add Donnie Baseball and Sandy Koufax –who attended last night’s series clincher– too, if you like, but that’s just icing.

–Or, for fans of anagrams and continuity, you place Kate Upton on the cover with Dodger utility infielder Nick Punto.

–If the Dodgers, with Puig, and the A’s, with fellow Cuban Yoenis Cespedes, a second-year slugger, advance to the World Series, Fidel Castro needs to throw out the opening pitch for Game 1. Also, it would be the 25th anniversary of the last time these two met in the Fall Classic. Or, you could put this trio on the cover of SI.

–I’d like to think that the tremendous gesture that Dodger outfielder Matt Kemp made toward terminally ill fan Joshua Jones back on May 5 (“How you like that, Josh?”), after Los Angeles had just been swept three straight at the home of their arch-rivals in San Francisco to fall to 13-18, had a little something to do with this season’s historic turnaround. Of course, Puig may have had more to do with it. But I’d like to think the Kemp-Jones summit played a role. Jones passed away in August.

2. Oct-Olber-Fest (More on Yesterday’s Quadrupleheader)

Four playoff games that stretched from 1:07 p.m. until after midnight on the East Coast on an otherwise drab and often rainy Monday on the East Coast. Thanks, baseball. Thoughts on the rest of it:

— Vote For Pedro! I really enjoy listening to Pedro Martinez’s baseball insights on the TBS post-game show hosted by Keith Olbermann. Both he and fellow former All-Star Gary Sheffield criticized Clay Bucholz and the Red Sox for pitching to Evan Longoria in Tampa Bay — he clouted a three-run, game-tying blast –but they did so by explaining WHY it was foolhardy and providing detailed analysis. Now if we can just get Pedro to wardrobe.

— If San Francisco 49er safety Donte Whitner can legally change his name to Donte Hitner, why won’t Oakland A’s reliever Grant Balfour just get it over with and add the second “l” to his surname?

–The A’s appear to be as jovial and close a team as the Tigers are taciturn and icy. Don’t like Detroit’s juju right now.

–While Detroit lost yesterday, is it possible that Jim Leyland squandered this series in Game 2? You’ve got Justin Verlander pitching four-hit, shutout ball through seven innings. And you pull him with the score knotted at 0-0 to open the eighth? If you’ve watched Verlander pitch the past couple of seasons, you’ve seen this movie: excellent outing, often a shutout effort, and no run support. That’s not Leyland’s fault per se, but why not allow him to pitch the eighth (yes, Oakland won it in the 9th, not the 8th, but you move every reliever back an inning this way). Verlander was at 117 pitches when pulled. That’s high, but he’s a hoss.

–Detroit was last in the MLB in stolen bases this season. The Tigers rarely hit and run or even bunt. Leyland pulled Verlander too soon and it was clear to anyone watching that Anibel Sanchez was struggling yesterday in the 5th inning before allowing the two-run blast to Seth Smith. The chain-smoker is a Hall of Famer, sure, but there are a lot of fans in Detroit who believe that his job is extremely simple (fills out lineup card with ” Cabrera” and “Fielder”, pulls out a Salem…) and that he’s operating at a Todd-as-meth-cook efficiency level.

–The S. Louis Cardinals’ Carlos Beltran, as Yahoo! Sports’ Jeff Passan pointed out, has career postseason numbers that compare favorably to another prolific No. 3, Babe Ruth.

…………………G        AB           BA     OBP        HR       RBI    H     BB   SLG%

Ruth:            41        129         .326    .467         15         33      42    33      .744

Beltran:        38       38           .355    .464        16          31      49    28     .783

–Wacha Wacha Wacha. There, I said it. The Cards’ ace, Michael Wacha, has now taken his last two starts into the eighth inning without surrendering a hit. Not bad for a 22 year-old from Iowa.

3. Don’t Think Pink

 

Our loyal friend both inside and outside the blog, Moose, is a breast cancer survivor who recently has experienced yet another unwelcome visit from the old family nemesis. Her first chemotherapy treatment in this latest bout (she has a 3-0 lifetime record versus cancer) was last Wednesday and this time she’s keeping an on-line journal, moosenoos.com, to record her thoughts and experiences. The latest entry, “Don’t Think Pink”, is worth your time.

4. Gus Fring Never Got an Obituary

Pertinent data: This ad, which actually appeared on page 4A of last Friday’s Albuquerque Journal, cost $166 to place. There was a 40% increase in single copy sales that day, and traffic to that page was approximately 60 times what the paper’s top story garners. You can purchase a copy on eBay for $26.

5. Legend of the Fall

This is a break from tradition, but I finished yesterday’s write-up on “Gravity” and kept it on yesterday’s edition of “It’s All Happening!” If you’d like to read it, click here and scroll down to No. 5. If you prefer to remain in the dark and silence –there is no sound in space — then we’ll catch you tomorrow. Thanks.