These West Coast Games Are Killing Me

Maybe it’s because I’ve been having a particularly busy week as far as school and work are concerned.  Maybe it’s because I’m simply not as young as I used to be.  Whatever the cause, these west coast games are really taking a toll on me this week.  It took everything in my power to stay awake during last night’s game, and I still managed to nod off temporarily at times.

Even though the Indians lost 4-1 last night, I couldn’t find myself that disappointed.  They scored a bazillion runs over the prior four games and started their first road trip of the year with a bang.  Even though they had a few missed opportunities (runners in scoring position with fewer than two outs) I still wasn’t as frustrated by this as I was during the Toronto and Chicago series.  They weren’t going to continue to score 8+ runs a game, although I’m starting to worry that they may need to if the starting pitching remains sketchy on certain days.

I want to tip my cap to Seattle’s pitching staff, particularly Jason Vargas.  The Indians tend to struggle against left-handed pitching, but Vargas and the bullpen still managed to pitch their way out of trouble on several occasions.  The held a previously red-hot offense to 1 run on 4 hits.

Unfortunately, I cannot really tip my cap to Derek Lowe, who threw approximately 4,000 pitches by the 4th inning (113 in 4 1/3 to be exact).  The one compliment I can give Lowe (or perhaps it should be a criticism of the Seattle offense) is that I think the score could have been much, much worse.  As Lowe threw pitch after pitch after pitch, I really started to glaze over.  I was chatting with a Phillies fan on Twitter, and put the Phillies/Giants game on my computer (0-0 in the 10th, with a heck of a duel from Cliff Lee and Matt Cain if you missed it).  If not for Phillies/Giants, I probably would’ve fallen asleep much sooner!

I made it a little while longer before I nodded off.  I awoke when my dog decided to jump directly onto my head – I opened my eyes to see her eyes nearly touching mine.  I then looked over at the television to see Carlos Santana strike out with a runner on (it was the 8th).  If she’s going to wake me, I really wish she’d wake me for something good.  Maybe she just knows that I love Carlos Santana.  (The picture below is her modeling her new Indians jersey for Puppypalooza next month).

By the end of the game, I’d already started to fade out once again.  When I woke up for the second time (thankfully on my own and not because a dog was standing on my head, eyeball to eyeball) there was a special on STO about the 1948 Indians World Series.  I think I had more fun watching that than I did this entire game.  This loss was kind of forgettable, which wasn’t helped by my complete exhaustion!