Saturday News: The Tools of Ignorance

The Yanks came away on the winning side of a wet one last night.

Am I the only one who finds rain wins to be dissatisfying?  Not that I want to lose.  But part of what makes baseball special for me is the consistency of 27 outs.  Last night's victory after just 18 outs feels cheap.

It wasn't cheap for CC Sabathia though.  The big man looked good again, 9K against only 4 baserunners over 6 IP is impressive. Even more impressive is that Sabathia was clearly just going through the batters: he needed only 73 pitches, an average of 12 an inning.

Considering that half of his outs came on strikeouts, that's an incredibly low pitch count.

Former Yankee Alfonso Soriano is getting ownerships' goat over on the North Side of Chicago (see what I did there?).  There are rumors that the Cubs would actually release Sori over his terrible defense in LF: at only (approximately) 34, he's already receiving a regular late-game defensive replacement.

Counting this very young season, the Cubs have Soriano's rights for 5 seasons to the tune of $90M.  You can't just cut a guy like that, he could go play for your arch-rival for peanuts, and hurt you 18 times a year.  But Soriano has always had a questionable relationship with defense and a bad attitude (remember he nearly got listed as ineligible by the Nats when they moved him to LF?).  Maybe you could bench him and he'd throw a tantrum big enough to let the Cubs void his contract, or maybe he'd retire.

The 2010 season is young, but the award for Scumbag of the Season has already been locked up.  Our award winner (allegedly) was at a Phillies' game.  A few seats away, father has brought his daughters to the ball park.  A group of drunks behind the father and daughters gets unruly, swears and throws beer and spit, and get ejected from the park.

That's when Scumbag steps in.  He walks up behind father and daughters and (allegedly) sticks two fingers down his throat to intentionally vomit on the 11-year old.

If that had been my kid, the headline would have read: Philly Fan Thrown to His Death at Game, Morristown Man Held.

But the father (an off-duty cop, which is no surprise because stories like this always seem to involve an off-duty cop, and I wonder what relationship his profession has the reporting of this story, both the police reporting and the journalists' reporting), merely restrains the Scumbag until stadium security steps in.

Rain suspended last night's game between our AL East rivals, tied 1-1 in the bottom of the 9th.  It's a nice spot for the Sox, who can put a rested Papelbon back on the mound to start extra innings after he pitched the 9th last night.

Despite yesterday's DL rumors, CF Mike Cameron underwent a procedure to pass his kidney stone and could be back on the field today.  Ellsbury hasn't hit the DL, and I think at this point, they'll just play a man down rather than lose him for two weeks.