And on the eighth day, God walked with the mortals and temporarily made Himself fallible, since the only way to make people truly appreciate your total awesomeness is by occasionally playing down to their level in between extraordinary demonstrations of how much better than them you are, and He is funny like that.
Milwaukee 15, Seattle 5. But I didn't see any Brewers launching home runs off Carlos Zambrano and Jorge Julio in a pressure-packed Latin deathmatch, so whatever, I'm not impressed.
Add Felix, Marcos Carvajal, and Mike Bumstead to the list of guys who've made appearances in which they gave up as many or more runs than they had innings pitched. I suppose the bright side of having allowed 65 earned runs in 44 innings is that the bulk of the damage has come against guys who don't have a prayer of making the club, but that's kind of like being thankful that you only shattered both your legs instead of your skull when you fell off the roof of your house trying to impress a girl with a crazy backwards dive into the shallow end of your pool. Little consolation. No, I'm not taking things too seriously. What? Shut up, you are too.
The good news from this afternoon is that Jeff Clement hit a home run off of a real-life Major League pitcher, Mike Morse hit a home run off of some other guy, and Beltre bookended a strikeout on a low-and-away slider with a pair of bombs in the WBC. Oh, and Rafael Soriano tossed a couple of scoreless innings while Todd Sears stole a base for the first time since 2003 (I'm serious), adding another dimension to his ongoing position battle with Richie Sexson. Baserunning advantage: Sears!
Anthony Gwywnn - Chris Gwynn's nephew, and sometimes referred to as Tony Gwynn's son - had four home runs in 1282 professional at bats coming into the spring. I hope you like Tacoma's rush hour gridlock, Bumstead.
Time for your daily quote. Watch as Mike Hargrove says the same thing four different ways in the span of two sentences when talking about Felix's surprisingly mediocre performance:
Split squad tomorrow. Jamie Moyer, JJ Putz, Jeff Harris, and Travis Blackley will take on Team Bonds at 3:05pm EST, while Luis Gonzalez, Dave Burba, Emiliano Fruto, and Sean Green will give Japan a taste of the best the Mariners have to offer in the nightcap. Clint Nageotte was scheduled to pitch a little tomorrow, but his left hamstring was bested by God's cruel joke, so he'll be out for a day or three. This team needs more religious zealots.