A whimperish opening of the shiny half-new K, to say the least.
The performer of the game was Sidney Ponson. Aside from a few irrelevant relief performances, everything else was bad. Bad defense, more bad at bats. Mental mistaes, everything. The last four or five innings had all the excitement of an Iowa winter.
Ponson wasn't terrific, but he wasn't bad either. Since he's still exciting such strong emotions from people, I'll say no more than that.
The word from Denny and other channels is that the mix of sun, shadows, and backdrop made it hard to hit. The game had a weird start time, to be sure. Maybe the K Crew was too distracting as well, or Sluggerrrr's gold mane too bright. I don't know.
Of course, this excuse, should we accept it, also means we must take something away from our own pitching heroes and their noble accomplishments, if this was the case.
I know that personally, I could use a day off from seeing Miguel Olivo bat. This is going to sound incredibly dickish, but it is legitimately amazing to watch Olivo at the plate and then remember that he is is the top 1% of baseball players on the planet right now. Sure, he's a catcher (bonus points) and has a good arm and some people think he calls a good game (which I find absolutely hillarious given how he bats) so everything almost balances out. Still, he's a Major League baseball player, and an established one, and he looks like a drunk college kid playing a video game at 3 AM. Swing, swing, swing. Why anyone ever throws him a fastball, I have no idea. OK... here comes the lamest cliche in the world, but its applicable... if you saw a ten year old doing what Miguel Olivo does each day in a Little League game, you would be disapointed.
I've become what I hate, thanks to Miguel. All that's missing is a rant about players not hitting free throws, NBA players travelling all the time, something about steroids, and a cup of coffee for me to get my certified angry white man degree.