Hard to fathom that Gavin Floyd could take a no-hitter into the ninth inning last night against the Twins, who had pretty well owned his butt every time they’d met in the past. It was even stranger considering the thimble-sized strike zone of home plate umpire Dana Demuth, who must have had some interesting conversations with AJ (and maybe even Mauer) over the course of the night. I’m glad that Scott Ullger went out of his way after the game to point out that Twins batters gave Floyd a bit extra help by chasing, but you had the sense that starting with the middle innings, the pitcher was pretty much on his game.

I know that Bert sometimes gets carried away with stuff, but he was a righteous pit bull when he went after Ozzie Guillen for lifting Floyd in the ninth following Mauer’s double. I mean, the White Sox had a six-run lead and Floyd deserved a shot at finishing. That’s what Gardy did last season with Scott Baker took his perfect game into the ninth against Kansas City and lost it on Mike Sweeney’s single. Ozzie should have given his young pitcher center stage.

Of course, Ozzie is Ozzie. Or, as Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti wrote after the game: “Ozzie Guillen didn’t deserve to be bailed out by a classy, polite kid with hair combed across his forehead, low on his brow. It isn’t news, of course, that Guillen is the clown doofus of sports, a disgrace to a city, a franchise, intelligent humanity and those of us who must chronicle his arrested-adolescent b.s. to the point of ad nauseum.”

Mariotti’s attack was brought on by Ozzie’s F-bombin’ outburst in Toronto the other day when he went after the fans and media for not showing his team enough respect from week to week. You’ve probably seen it on ESPN… or FSN… or WGN… or any network south of the Family Channel. So the details needn’t be repeated here. And, of course, there’s the clubhouse episode involving blow-up dolls and baseball bats and stuff that you can read about in Mariotti’s column.

Overstatement begets overstatement, huh?

Whatever the case, Floyd’s near no-hitter pretty much got drowned out last night by the wall of noise that seems to routinely emanate from the White Sox clubhouse and front office. If you don’t believe me, check out the web sites of the two Chicago dailies here and here. One-hitter? What one-hitter?

That being said, you know it’s a weird night when the savior of the Yankees, Joba Chamberlain, gives up a three-run homer to Dave Dellucci to let Cleveland rally to a 5-3 victory. Afterward, in the Yankees clubhouse, a New York Post columnist went for wisdom to — of all people — the great sage of relief pitching Latroy Hawkins, who said: “I thought the guys he should have been throwing breaking balls to he wasn’t.”

And then, across the country in Seattle, there was our guy Sidney Ponson giving up one run in seven innings. Of course, his Rangers got him a 10-0 lead after 2 1/2 innings so it shouldn’t have been a surprise that he got the win. The surprise for Twins historians is that the final wasn’t 10-7 instead of 10-1 and that, three starts into this incarnation of his career, Ponson is 2-0 with a 1.33 ERA. He would likely be 3-0, save for the fielding silliness that erupted around him a week ago Saturday in his 2008 debut start against the Twins.

Well, on a go-figure night, at least one thing made perfect sense. How ’bout them Tigers?

other people are here too

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 at 8:54 am and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.