The guy they got to take your place
Can field as well as you,
And I can’t help but notice
That he’s hitting better, too.

The whole team’s playing baseball now
The way it should be played
All in all, I’m really glad
They dealt you in that trade.

Most fans of teams love the team more than any individual player. Which makes sense as players age and are replaced by the next generation. My father’s Dodgers aren’t the same team as is on the field now. Though if he were still alive, he’d root for them.

The Braves were down by six runs on the twentieth of May,
Against the Cincinnati Reds–one inning left to play.
We’d rallied back for three runs by the time I got the call;
With one out and the bases juiced, I got to touch them all.

And almost as exciting, facing Florida in July;
My pinch-hit grand salami broke a Braves and Marlins tie.
That inning saw eight runners score–my RBIs were half.
Though six Braves’ runs were ruled unearned because of Cantu’s gaffe.

Top of the ninth in Houston and the skipper called my name;
An RBI would tie it but a clout could win the game.
Their closer’d only given up three gopher balls all year–
I sent the ball to Crawford Street and swept the bases clear.

I rarely get to start games, ’cause I’m better in the pinch;
I’ll take your pitch four hundred feet if you miss by an inch.
Utility infielder, though my average isn’t great;
My bat can muscle out the ball from both sides of the plate.

On May 20th, he hit a pinch-hit, walk-off grand slam home run that lifted the Braves over the Cincinnati Reds to cap a seven-run rally.. On July 24, he hit his second pinch-hit, grand slam home run as part of an eight-run Braves eighth inning. And then, on August 10, he hit a pinch-hit two-run shot in the top of the ninth to put the Braves ahead of the Astros. No wonder some people call him “Clutch” Conrad.

Anyway, I was going to write something generic based on him but then last night happened and I decided, the heck with it, I’ll *call* it “Brooks Conrad” and I’ll write what happened.

The only bit of poetic license is that all of Conrad’s six home runs this year came from the same side of the plate. But he is a switch-hitting utility infielder. He was drafted by Houston, and so on.

Enjoy!

How this all works is that a bunch of us get together three times a week and one of the league commissioners runs ten days worth of simulation using Out of the Park 6.5a. Scores of major league games are posted to an AIM chat room as well as the pitchers of record in those games. After one sim, Clark’s handler commented that Clark’s ERA was going to go up after a particularly bad start. I don’t know exactly what he said but it made me think of the Folsom Prison Blues by Johnny Cash. The first line is what came to me and I had to go check his record for the rest of it. Chandler is Jason Chandler winner of last year’s Cy Young.

Clark’s Song

My ERA is rising
My record’s seven-six
I have three no-decisions
that factor in the mix
And I’ve always been a starer
Don’t put me in the pen
I know I lost tonight’s game
But I will win again!

My ratings show I’m ready
And I’m improving still
It isn’t just my pitching-
It’s my character and will
Though I’m not as good as Chandler,
I can outpitch the rest
I’m nowhere close to perfect,
But I will do my best!

The pitcher is the one who gets the credit or the blame
No L or W goes up beside the catcher’s name
But every ball caught on the fly or hit into the stands
Each double-play or called strike three starts in the catcher’s hands.

An etheree is a syllable-count poem where each line has as many syllables as its line number, beginning at one and going to ten.

Good luck Lance. And Roy, too. Roy had a rough outing his first game with Philly bit J.A. Happ did well for the Astros. It’s nearly 6:30 am–I should be sleeping.

They brought us a pitcher who spent the year injured.
How well he’s recovered, we don’t really know.
Tonight he’ll be facing the Brew-crew in Houston–
I guess we’ll discover how well he can throw.

I’m not too impressed with the minor-league shortstop,
Whose forty-two errors just boggled my mind.
The number’s so high that it’s not on the website.
An empty placeholder is all that you’ll find.

In Triple-A Round Rock you’ll see the first baseman,
Though they say Lance Berkman has nothing to fear.
The kid bats three hundred to Berkman’s two-fifty.
So who’ll be the starting first-baseman next year?

The deal’s completed and some folks are happy.
And others complain that the Astros were had.
But good play erases a lot of bad feelings,
And if they start winning, the fans will be glad.

According to the Minor League Baseball Wallace is hitting .301 for the Las Vegas 51′s though he’s now listed with the Round Rock Express where he’ll be preparing for his new role. Berkman, according to astros.com is batting .245. Now I realize that Wallace is in AAA, but ya gotta figure that even adjusted that’s better than Berkman.

Now, about Villar and the 42 errors. Click here and see the stats for the Lexington Legends–Villar’s new team. Notice the error column. There is a space for Villars’ errors. Not a 0, not a 42, a space.  Matt Thomas don’t lie so I know what number should be there.  And that’s for this season, folks.  In 100 (not rounded) games.  That’s almost one every other game.

I’m really not as down on Happ as the song implies. He just hasn’t pitched much and only one game since he got back from injury. So the Astros are getting a pig in a poke.  He was a contender for Rookie of the Year, but I don’t know that being first among seconds is a sufficient recommendation.

I think good play erases bad feelings and it’s entirely possible that this turns out to be a good thing for the Astros. But only time will tell.

Thinking heat, what do they do?
Take their swing much too early
But Lidge comes in with the breaking stuff too
‘Cause the heater’s not what he’s about

CHORUS:
He’s the guy with the slider
Watch the arc of the flight
Darting down as the hitter is retired
With the top of their lineup
In to face him tonight
And they whiff when they’re facing the guy
With the slider

Batter up, stand at the plate
Bradley throws him a heater
No longer early, now his swing is too late
And it’s strike three and he sits back down

CHORUS:

Got it done, finished the game
Got the save and the glory
In the future, they’ll remember his name
As a man in the pitching elite

CHORUS:

The guy with the slider  (repeat)

This is an acrostic sonnet. It was a lot of work and a lot of fun.

A pitcher was perfect, he sat down each batter;
Three up and three down for eight innings of ball.
It would have been nine but for one tiny problem–
Jim Joyce at first base didn’t make the right call.

For twenty-six outs, Galarraga was perfect;
The next man to face him was called safe at first.
Of all blown calls in the annals of baseball,
This blunder has got to be one of the worst.

It isn’t official to look at a replay
Unless there’s a question of home run or not.
Until there’s a change in the MLB rulebook,
The umpire’s best judgment is all that we’ve got.

They say no one’s perfect–not even in baseball
But twice it has happened in May, twenty-ten.
Roy Halladay did it, likewise Dallas Braden;
And on June the second, it happened again.

I hope to have one of my standard recorded-on-my-phone sound files up later today.