3-4: Mariners Play Manhattan Dodgers. Game Rained Out By Loss

Back in college, I had a class taught by someone that on multiple occasions subtly referenced her extensive drug use. It was an English class, and rather than teach us to write college level essays, she wanted us to go home and write one simile and bring it to class.

Now, had this been a typical college, the students would have at least pretended to try. But this was a bad community college. The students were basically there to tell their parents they went to college. So the next day everyone would turn in their similes and they were brutal and they would get full credit.

At one point we were asked to turn in a poetic simile that somehow related to shapes or colors. These received full credit:

• Yellow, like a banana

• Almond, like an eye

• Green, like the grass

And my personally favorite:

• Orange. Like an orange.

I hope whoever wrote that last one choked on a Matryoshka doll.

These are not similes. They’re not poems. They’re descriptions of actual things. One might say this game was brown like poo.

But at the same time, this game wasn’t surprising. Mariners are a good team. Dodgers are a good, possibly slightly better team. Mariners scored 5 runs, which is hardly great. Dodgers scored 5 runs right up until they scored a 6^th run. The Mariners had a few good hits. They also struck out over a dozen times. They are a team that has a lot of power hitters with strikeout problems. No one is surprised here.

It stings to lose any game, especially a game with a lead, but in the end, this was a 6 to 5 game where the slightly better team took 11 innings to beat the slightly worse team. There isn’t necessarily much more to it than that. Sometimes an orange is just orange.

Assorted Thoughts

• Today I found out that Seth Smith’s real name is Garry. Having just finished binge watching Parks and Rec, I am perfectly happy referring to him as Jerry for the remainder of his tenure as a Mariner, after which time he will forever be known as Terry. Apparently he was also backup quarterback to Eli Manning. So now you know two new things.

• This was the first time I have heard Yasiel Puig’s name pronounced. It… it’s not great.

• Nelson Cruz started off the game with a mammoth popup that floated over the wall powered by fairy dust and positive thinking. That home run was his 3^rd in as many games. Then in the 4^th inning he had another homerun. I’m not sure I’m ready to come to terms with liking Nelson Cruz, but I like how determined he is to hug it out.

• This happened:

Boss defense! pic.twitter.com/DhDNrCC507

— Mariners Minors (@MiLBMariners) April 14, 2015

Lookout Landing is going to take over the world.

• In the first inning, Jim Joyce signaled that Kyle Seager struck out, even though the count was only 2-2. They all had a good laugh about it. Ha Ha! Oh, Jim. Sleep lightly.

• Maybe this is common knowledge but it’s new to me: Carl Crawford is still pretty spectacular. He is essentially one non-injury away from being well worth his salary. In 6 games this season, he has been worth almost as much as he was his entire time with the Boston Red Sox. That’s intentionally misleading because he was terrible with the Red Sox, but statistics can be used to emphasize any point if you phrase it correctly. 100% of this sentence is correct. His previous two years he has been worth about 5.4 WAR, and that’s with severely injury shortened seasons. He’s still expensive, but if you’re the Dodgers and you see money as nothing more than tree scalp, Carl Crawford must be making you very happy.

• The term "Dodgers" was a reference to a slur used by those in Manhattan to describe people living in Brooklyn. Then LA was like "let’s keep it!" Everything about Los Angeles Sports is terrible.

• "The Dodger faithful here, they’ll be here until about the 6^th inning" ~Dave Sims burn.

• Dustin Ackley hit a home run today as well. Then this happened:

Behold, I have metaphorically discovered bigfoot.

• Brandon McCarthy still had 10 strikeouts today.

• Carson Smith smells something foul:

He was doing this all game. What are you smelling, Carson?

• James Paxton bears a striking resemblance to Droopy Dog.

• Kyle Seager is Boss

Tomorrow is another game against The Dodgers. Then the day after, there is another game against the Dodgers. Baseball is so dumb.