Baseball is Boring: Weekend Update

Baseball has been a bit undersold at With Leather, so I’ve decided to take a break from nonstop webcomics and professional wrestling to remedy the problem. Unfortunately nobody likes to read about baseball, because it is boring and not football, so you kinda have to coax people into clicking the link and consolidate everything into concise blurbs, preferably featuring a 65 x 90 picture of Buster Olney. That guy really knows his stuff. Did you realize how important On Base Percentage is?

Anyway, Baseball is Boring is the column to read if you want to kinow what happened this weekend, but you don’t want to know badly enough to find out at a reputable news source. Also, you don’t want to Google “Barry Bonds steroids” in quotes.

Kinsler and Cruz break every record, all at once.

The Texas Rangers’ Ian Kinsler and Nelson Cruz made history by becoming the first set of teammates to homer in each of the first three games of a season on Sunday, closing out a sweep of the Red Sox. The duo set a number of records, because we live in a society that puts things like “most copies sold on Game Boy” in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Here’s the queick list: Kinsler and Cruz came into the game as one of only six teammates to homer in each of the first two games of the season, and Kinsler became the first player to hit a lead-off homer in the first two. Cruz’s homer was the second by a right-handed batter to reach the upper deck in right field at Rangers Ballpark. ESPN set a record by mentioning Cliff Lee for no reason in 100 of their first 100 stories about the Texas Rangers, and the Red Sox became the first team to make me laugh out loud in real life in 2011.

Should the Red Sox be worried about Tough Stains?

Da Nationz™ fell to 0-3 for the first time since 1996, a season that began 0-5. There are big stories up everywhere with sensationalist titles like “Should the Red Sox Be Worried?” Then you click on the title and it takes you to a one sentence blurb that says “of course not, there are 163 games left in the season, they are not going to go 0-163, what are you, stupid.” The Red Sox are off today, then will try to snap out of their funk starting Tuesday in Cleveland, which is sort of like trying to solve your sex addiction by hanging out in a leper colony.

At least the Sox are better than Baltimore, right? Right?

The lowly Baltimore Orioles are riding high on a three game sweep of the Tampa Bay Rays, marking the first time in 13 years that Orioles fans can say something positive about the team other than “there are a lot of people in the minor leagues who are going to be good, I swear to God.” Zach Britton held the Rays to one run over six innings in his big league debut, at different times channeling the totem spirits of Ben McDonald, Jeffrey Hammonds, Nolan Reimold and Matt Weiters. And thank goodness Britton looks good, because he’s the last guy the Orioles had in the minors. No, seriously, their AAA team is just a mascot and some nut vendors.

But hey, congratulations to the O’s for their best season start since 1997. I’m sure this is absolutely not the inverse of the Red Sox situation, and that the Orioles will continue to contend throughout 2011.

Like the old song goes, “Cabrera to Cabrera to Cabrera”

Cleveland’s High-A League talent combined their powers on Sunday to turn a triple play against the Chicago White Sox. Guitar virtuoso turned ethnic Ryan Garko Carlos Santana, in his first major league start at first base, dove and caught a popped bunt from Alexei Ramirez. He scrambled up to his feet and tossed the ball to Cabrera at first to double up A.J. Pierzynski. Cabrera then threw to a different, loosely related Cabrera at second to put out Carlos Quentin, who I guess was off somewhere playing basketball.

This was Cleveland’s first triple play since Asdrubal Cabrera turned an unassisted one against the Toronto Blue Jays on May 12, 2008, and the best part of the video is the very end, where the 14 people who showed up to Progressive Field get to be happy for a few seconds.

Dodgers, Giants don’t like it when you beat someone to death

In a story that reminds me of The Onion’s “Candidate Turns To Focus Group For Position On Rape,” San Francisco Giants managing partner Bill Neukom and Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt issued a joint statement condemning an assault in the Dodger Stadium parking lot that saw two vaguely sketched Latino men beat a guy into a coma. Stuff like this is always going down in California baseball stadium parking lots; a man stabbed his friend in the Dodgers parking lot in 2009, an off-duty police officer shot a couple of guys for beating him up at Angel Stadium in Anaheim two months later, and throughout the late 90s and early 2000s people were always sneaking up on Barry Bonds and stabbing him in the ass with sharp, balm-soaked objects.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich has offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to arrests. He was going to use it to sign Gary Sheffield, but this just seemed more constructive.

But no, seriously, fatally assaulting people is bad, and I’m finally happy someone is speaking up against it.

And speaking of Barry Bonds

The first two weeks of the trial of baseball’s all-time home run leader have included testimony from Bonds’ former business manager, his former mistress, one current and three former Major League players, three federal agents and 10 scientists. The Giants’ equipment manager and the trainer for the team during the time in question took the stand, as did Bonds’ surgeon. The prosecution also questioned two Latino men who brutally beat a guy into a coma in the Dogers parking lot about whether or not they thought Barry Bonds did steroids and lied about it, to which they responded, “lol of course he did.”

So the prosecution is set to rest their case, and the secular crucifixion of Barry Bonds begins. Meanwhile, Roger Clemens is on king-sized paddle boat somewhere jamming a golf club into a 15-year old and nobody really cares.

Carlos Ruiz gives the funniest interview of all time

The Philadelphia Phillies have a really great pitching staff. I think we all know that and have come to terms with it. Apprently catcher Carlos Ruiz JUST heard about this, and oh man, he can not believe it. Reproduced word-for-word from MLB.com:

“Oh, man,” Phillies catcher Carlos Ruiz said afterward.

Ruiz, who caught all 27 innings against the Astros, walked into the trainer’s room following Lee’s solid performance Saturday night, when somebody asked him how much fun it was to catch Halladay and Lee in back-to-back victories.

“Oh, my God,” he said. “I can’t believe it. And tomorrow we’ve got Roy.”

The topic came up again Sunday in a conversation with right-hander Danys Baez.

“And then we’ve got Cole Hamels,” Ruiz told Baez.

Ruiz smiled as he recalled those conversations.

“The first three games were special,” he said. “And now we’ve got Cole and Joe [Blanton] going next.”

I like to imagine Carlos Ruiz showing up to the Phillies opening day all dejected, having missed the entirety of Spring Training and having been unable to follow any baseball news since last October. He’s shuffling his feet, mumbling under his breath about how hard it’s going to be to catch for Rodrigo Lopez and Sidney Ponson, who he just figures are going to be there because he’s assuming the worst. He walks into the stadium, gets a team poster, unrolls it and just stands there with this shocked look on his face for several minutes before park security (and the Phillie Phanatic, as this is my imagination) usher him into the locker room. And then he spends like twenty minutes getting these guys’ autographs, chuckling sheepishly.

“Oh, dude,” said Phillies catcher Carlos Ruiz. “Man.”

In a related story, Ryan Howard got four RBIs, which means he has to strike out eight times in the next game to even everything out.