To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue.
-Wordsworth, "Tintern Abbey"
The Royals certainly played in the still sad music of man today at the Cell. If we are to have any chance against the A's this weekend, Buddy Bell needs to be able to go Wordsworth on us and find a way to "see into the life of things" and get this team contented and ready to play.
This was a chance to play more spoiler.
This was a chance to really upset thousands of people.
This was the kind of game the Royals need to win if they want to reach 63 wins.
Didn't happen.
Thanks to some bad luck and lots of double-plays, the Royals fell 5-4 to a highly beatable White Sox team at the Cell.
The Royals outhit the White Sox 12-6. They out walked them 5-2. They out homered them 3-2. Their pitchers struck out more batters, 7-4. So how'd they lose?
First, two Royals were caught stealing/picked off on the basepaths. Why Bell had Sanders or Buck moving at all is beyond me, but both plays were awful rally killers. Secondly, the Royals grounded into 4 double plays, and created another with the aforementioned Sanders blunder.
Are you kidding????
Third, even with all the created outs the Royals still left 8 men on base. Despite all the baserunners, the Royals also had the misfortune of having all three of their home runs be solo shots.
Call it White Sox moxie or situational pitching, but thats also fairly random/unfortunate.
If you replayed this game 100 times the Royals would likely win about 65% of the time. Whats worse, the Royals found a way to waste a second straight good effort from Odalis Perez, who lasted 7 innings, pitched incredibly slowly and allowed only 4 earned runs. Really, its not that bad a day from Odalis.
Not surprisingly, Ozzie found a way to work himself into the post-game interviews.
"Grudzielanek I think is mad at me because I didn't take him to the All-Star game. He has been killing us all year," Guillen said. "I don't think anybody in baseball, at least with the White Sox, will walk anybody to face Sweeney. Just looking for a double play ball or a strikeout."
I guess the good news is that the Teahen/Brown homer race is still red hot. This is like Sosa/McGwire in 1998, only on a pathetically small scale. Speaking of Teahen, "Royals2nd" has linked to an interesting story by Jeff Passan on Teahen re: Moneyball. I know this will shock you, but Buddy isn't a fan. I don't know why its acceptable for adults to dismiss something they haven't read, but thats the world we live in. Anti-intellectualism and a side of fries. If Buddy want's to disagree, the least he could do is actually know what he disagrees with, or refrain from doing so in a vaguely sexist way (dropping a PMS bomb) but hey, he's only a millionaire leader of men, so the dumber and crustier the better.
Pass the collection plate, I have more sales tax money to drop in, Mr. Glass.
When you have a .415 winning percentage, you can afford to be an anti-intellectual bore.
And the world turns, with another loss. On the bright side, the money may be well spent on Luke Hochevar. For the requiste positive story from the KC Star, click here.