Saturday, May 24, 2008

First Game Taken By Oaklands, 8-3

Boston's American League club embarked on its series of Western games this eve under discouraging conditions by succumbing to the Oaklands and their sharp sticks. Over 29,000 "rooters" saw the melancholy culmination of the Bostons' seven-game spotless streak. Wakefield's famed floater failed to fluster the Frisco Bay batsmen, who knocked two dongs out of the field of play in fair territory, and eight Oakland men reached the home plate before the reigns were handed to Aardsma and Timlin.

thanks, Dino VournasHarden's display was two steps above that of the Boston lofter, the former zipping strikes past the Beantown unit like a man in a hurry to arrive home to peruse his personal information-gathering device. The game concluded in under two hours and a half, with Oakland doing five runs better than the Hub gang. Against the Oaktowners' relief crew, the pilgrims were powerless, and fate handed them a defeat for the first time since Wednesday last, in weather hardly suitable for shirtsleeves.

Ol' Thomas drove out a home run in the opening frame on the first lob he witnessed from his veteran colleague, giving the Northern Californians a lead they wouldn't relinquish for the duration. Ellis plated himself and two others on a fence-traverser in a four-plate third inning, removing much of the remainder of Boston's fight. A dozen Red Sox were dispensed on strikes in the fair contest, ten of those swinging ineffectually on try number three. The Athletics justly deserved the victory as their hits were pieced together in a constructive manner and all their runs were earned.

Pedroia rang the dong bell for Francona's men, and lumber lessoneer Magadan was expunged from the dugout after foul-mouthing the official. Boston remains in first position and tries again in California behind fireballer Beckett to-morrow.

The league's east division scores:

NY-A 13, Seattle 2. Tampa 2, Balt. 0. T'ronto 7, Ks. City 2..

Comments:
Who the heck are you and what have you done with Jere?
Just kidding.
Very entertaining and a real nice touch with the black and white photo.
 
Good stuff! You'd have a solid beatwriter job if this was 1908 and not 2008.
 
Nice work! This is not easy to do, and you did it well.
 
Truly a cromulent blog-post.

"Rang the dong bell." Brilliant.
 
Glad you all liked.... I'm still using old articles to guide me but I hope to just start describing games this way...I better start talking out loud like this, too, for extra practice..
 
"lumber lessoneer"

!!!
 
haha, yeah that is the one I'm most proud of...
 
This is so great. I love the "lumber lessoneer" line, but I think the best line award goes to "zipping strikes past the Beantown unit like a man in a hurry to arrive home to peruse his personal information-gathering device."
 
I really loved this too. I must however, play the Simon Crowell role and critique one detail: I wouldn't have used the term 'dong', because as far as I'm aware, it wasn't used as a term for 'home run' until the late '70's / early '80's. I think 'dinger' also came into vogue around that time (and I recall that around that same time George Scott started calling his homers 'taters').

But still a great post. I just finished the book "Crazy '08" about the 1908 NL pennant race (as well as the rest of the baseball season), and you basically captured the language of the newspaper accounts of that period.
 
But the "dong" is what makes it my own. They also didn't have the internet back then. What I'm doing is using modern terms with the old-time language. I think it's funny to hear the word "dong" used in a 100-year old sounding article.
 
It's kind of like "The Village." It appears old-timey in almost every way, but it's really just taking place now. And if I need to go to the "towns" to get some "medicine," I can always do that.

But yeah, that's part of the joke: using funny modern terms including some I just make up but generally following the over-descriptive format of the baseball writing of yesteryear. But I'm glad you liked it either way.
 
I see...I was unclear on the concept. I like it, but I'm not liking the fact that the Sox have completely forgotten how to hit (or win) since you started doing it. Not that there's any correlation.
 
I thought of that, too--but I'm in the clear since I did the first one AFTER the first loss. But it was just as depressing to be doing it only after losses, so I took a break after that third loss in a row.
 

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