Tiny Casey: Super Sleuth - Part I

In my quest to solve the mystery of the Great American Trash Cans, I enlisted the help of a great, though small, detective. Tiny Agent Casey and his protege, Tinier Dunnson, are on the case. The two are very thorough. To begin the investigation they researched the different kinds of recepticles they might be looking for.

First up, the small, beige-ish white kind of can:

Then the medium, blue can:

And finally the large, green can(s):

I'm not exactly sure how examining the trash cans around my house will help them, but they're the detectives. Tune in next time for the continuation of this mystery.

Workin' for the Weekend (and more)

I'm not used to this whole working during baseball thing. As it turns out, it sucks. I don't get to see anything. And apparently I'm going to whine about that all season, but I gots ta make a livin'. In the last several days the Reds have finally won a game against the Diamondbacks, won another series with the Cubs (though barely) and lost the first game of the series with the Brewers. The common theme of all the games (until today's) was pretty good pitching backed by crap at the plate. This is made all the more disappointing by the hot start last year. Granted, last year we had a few more big bats in the lineup. One that I still miss a great deal. Because, you know, I knew him personally and all (that was sarcasm in case you didn't get it. I feel like an ass explaining it, but no one ever gets it). DAMN YOU AOL AND YOUR RANDOM BIAS AGAINST PARAGRAPH BREAKS!! Tonight it seems the offense might finally have started putting things together, scoring 6 runs. Unfortunately, those 6 runs were less than the Brewers' 10. If Coffey hadn't blown up and given up those five runs, though, Cincy might have been able to pull off another victory. That is assuming, of course, that the rest of the game went the way it did. But if you've seen Back to the Future you know what happens if you change the past. Hamilton contributed two of the Reds' runs with his third homer of the season. Encarnacion and Griffey also helped the score. As for pitching, Milton did not have too terrible an outing. He only gave up one home run in his five innings, only three hits, and three runs. Santos and Saarloos allowed a run a piece. Coutlangus continued looking pretty darn awesome and allowed no runs on one hit. Coffey, however, allowed five runs, four earned (thanks mostly to a Bill Hall grand slam) in one-third of an inning. Tomorrow it's game two. Matt Belisle attempts to keep his good times rolling against Milwaukee's Dave Bush. The game's on FSN at 7:10. Guess where I'll be!

New(ish?) Blog

New blog to link for you. New for me anyway. I've been meaning to check this out for a while but I am lazy and have failed to do so until now. It's quite entertaining. Go check out Redus and Weep.

Hamilton

I finally got to see Hamilton do something live!!! I missed his first major league at bat. I missed his first major league start. I missed his first major league hit. I missed his first major league home run. Granted, three of those were contained in one game. Tonight, thanks to the wonders of this thing called a "night off" I got to see his second major league home run. I think he's going to be pretty exciting.

Since I Can't Say it Better Myself

Yeah!

Hardy Har Har

Anyone else think Jeff Brantley's air time consists of more laughing than anything else?

Mr. Giant Golf Club Inventor

That would be my new favorite Real Man of Genius and I just thought you all should know it, since I heard the commercial during tonight's game. FOUR!!!
Tonight was another 1 run loss for the Reds, this one coming at the end of 11 innings. Thanks to the extended nature of the game, I was able to hear/see more than the last inning of the game. Still, I was not able to bear witness to Josh Hamilton's first major league hit/homerun. I'm sorry to have missed it, but I'm sure I can find a number of replays. There's probably one up on Reds.com already. It's going to be quite the popular story in the Cincy area.
Kyle Lohse started the game for the Reds. The only players not to leave the bench or bullpen during the course of the game were Chad Moeller, Victor Santos and Jon Coutlangus.
Dunn started off his evening with a solo homer in the 1st. Hamilton's 2-run bomb came in the 3rd. Brandon Phillips finished out the scoring with his own solo shot, also in the 3rd.
Even with those three home runs, the Reds could not pull out a win. The Snakes jumped out to the lead in their half of the 1st on a 3-run homer from Chad Tracy. Hamilton and Phillips gave the Reds the lead in the 3rd, but Chris Snyder's home run in the 4th brought the game to a tie. It stayed that way until the bottom of the 11th, when Arizona finally managed to put the game out of its misery, handing the Reds loss number 4, with a score of 5-4.

Quadruple Header

Belated happy holidays and all that! Thanks to work and the rabbit I now have 4 games on which to catch you up (how strange, in order to avoid ending the sentence in a preposition, I rearranged it so that it ended in another preposition. Of course, to avoid it all together I'd have to have said something like "up on which to catch you," and that just sounds dumb). Seeing as that would take forever to do well, I'll do it short and crappy.

Game the first was the first of the series with the Pirates. Also a game my evil mother attended without me. Let it be known that I actually love my mother and do not think she is evil, but she never even asked if I wanted to go and now I am bitter. Though the cold was also bitter, the Reds won convincingly, by a score of 6 to 1. Matt Belisle pitched and did a bang up job, becoming the fourth pitcher in a row for the Reds to make it through at least 6 innings, which I think is pretty darn nifty. He also held the Pirates to just 1 run. Mom would also like you to know that she put her hot dog wrapper in her pocket rather than let if drift onto the field because she is a concerned citizen and fan and also because there were apparently no trash cans nearby. This is a situation I plan to look into next time I'm at Great American. I cannot recall ever seeing trash cans inside the park. That could be because the trash is not high on my list of Things I'm Excited to See. Or maybe there really aren't any. The investigation begins.

The second game was also against the Pirates (imagine that!). In order to avoid frostbite, the game was moved to 1:00 in the afternoon. Even with the short rest and the bitter cold the Reds came out on top once again, giving Harang his 2nd win of the year with a score of 7-5. Adam Dunn hit his 3rd home run of the season and also stole 2 bases. Jon Coutlangus's major league debut was rather successful, giving up no hits and striking out one in his 0.2 innings.

I pretty much missed Sunday's game due to family time. I played ImaginIff, Spoons and Shoot My Cousins with Foam Airplanes while the Reds were losing for the 2nd time this season. Eric Milton was the pitcher and earner of the big, ugly L. The defeat was pretty crushing, 6-3. The bullpen gave up more than 0 runs for the first time this season, with Coffey and Coutlangus both giving up solo homers. I was able to stop by the TV long enough to see both.

Tonight's game was in Arizona where it is much warmer. It always seems that the Reds have a hard time with the Diamondbacks, and so it was again today. Cincinnati's new away uniforms look a lot like the Phillie's, but I like them still. The D-backs also look different this year, sporting a surprising amount of red. Surprising to me, anyway. While I struggled through an evening of controling high school kids, Bronson Arroyo was working his way through 4 innings of no-hit baseball. The Snakes struck back, though, and took the lead in the 8th. I jumped in my car and turned on the radio in time for the top of the 9th, during which Josh Hamilton walked, making it on base for the first time this season (I think). Hatteberg's double play eliminated them both. Javy got on base with a single just before Phillips ended the game on a fly ball out, giving the Reds loss number 3.

The standings page is all kinds of messed up right now, but I believe Cincinnati and Pittsburgh are still tied for first in the division, both with a record of 4-3.

Number Three

The Reds squeaked out a win for their third game of the year. They put the Cubs down 5-2, but didn't manage to get the lead until the 7th inning. Kyle Lohse pitched for the Reds while Jason Marquis did the same for the Cubs. In his 6.1 innings, Lohse gave up 2 runs on 10 hits and struck out 3. He was replaced by a slew of relievers, including such memorable names as Victor Santos, Rheal Cormier, Kirk Saarloos, Mike Stanton and David Weathers. Their combined 2.2 innings pitched resulted in no more hits and no more runs. Santos got the win and Weathers earned his first save of the season.

The Cubs scored the first run in the 2nd, but the Reds came right back with their own in the 4th when Edwin Encarnacion singled in Brandon Phillips. LFC (Least Favorite Cub) Matt Murton was partly responsible for Chicago's 2nd run, coming home on Aramis Ramirez's double in the 5th. Luckily that was all the scoring the Cubbies would do. The Reds put up 2 more runs in the 7th on a Jeff Conine single and an Adam Dunn walk, at which point they took the lead for good. And just for good measure Scott Hatteberg put up a 2-run homer in the 8th. That all adds up to 5 runs for the good guys and 2 for the bad guys. Good guys win.

Cincinnati is currently tied with Milwaukee for 2nd in the division, just behind the surprising Pittsburgh Pirates, who somehow swept Houston. The Pirates come to town this weekend, and my mother is going to the game tonight without me. How rude.

In Case You Hadn't Noticed

Thom Brennaman would like you to know that it is cold outside today and also that it was not cold outside yesterday. For those of you not living in the eastern half of the US, I suppose that could be news to you, but I'm assuming the vast majority of the people who watched the game tonight probably already know that it's snowing, even though it was almost 80 yesterday.

While Thom talked about the weather there was an actual game going on. Bronson Arroyo's 2007 debut was not quite as clean and shiny as his 2006 debut, but it wasn't too bad. Sure, it ended in a 4-1 loss to the Cubs, but who wants to play baseball when it's 20 degrees and snowing anyway? Perhaps things would have gone better for Arroyo if he had worn long sleeves. He gave up 8 hits and 4 earned runs through 7 plus innings. He did strike out 9, though. Mike Stanton and Todd Coffey combined their efforts for the 8th inning, giving up a hit and no runs. Jared Burton and Victor Santos covered the 9th. Burton's major league debut was not exactly stellar. While he gave up no hits, he walked all three batters he faced. I'd be a nervous wreck, too, though, so no judgment here.

The offense was apparently frozen tonight, scoring just 1 run on 3 hits. The lone RBI goes to none other than Adam Dunn, who probably would have added a few more home runs to his record tonight had the weather been a bit more baseball-like. Or at least that's what Thom said on TV. I really don't know much about how temperature affects a ball's ability to travel, but that's why I'm not a physicist.

On a completely different note, did you know that Jeff Conine is an accomplished racquetball player? If you didn't, now you do.

Too Many Networks

Do you think FSN-HD is an actual channel? I don't have any fancy HD channels, even though I am currently house/cat-sitting for people with a giant HD television, and the Reds site says the game will be on FSN-HD. I don't know enough about the various Fox networks to understand if that means tomorrow's game will or will not be on FSN Ohio. I have time to watch this one, too! Exciting! Maybe I'll get to see Josh Hamilton's second major league at bat. I did finally see his first, courtesy of RHM.

That's really all I've got for now. It's almost 6 AM and I have yet to go to bed. Here's hoping for some work-free baseball to watch tomorrow (or today, rather).

Startin' Out Right

I get some crazy amount of joy out of kicking Carlos Zambrano's butt. I would if I had the opportunity, anyway. Short of that, the Reds kicking his butt on Opening Day is pretty darn good, too. Being able to see more of the game would have been great, but work has this annoying habit of always starting in the middle of games. Since the score when I left was 5-1, though, I suppose I didn't miss a whole lot of consequence.

Adam Dunn earned himself the position of Hero of the Day quite early in the game. He got Zambrano all in a tizzy after hitting home runs off of him in each of his first two appearances. Number two also earned him his 200th career homer. What a nice milestone to reach on Opening Day.

The only run the Cubs managed to score was due to an error by Ryan Freel. Freel was just a little extra excited to be playing and missed his target, allowing my Least Favorite Cub for two seasons running (Matt Murton) to score.

The last I saw of the game was poor little Carlos's meltdown in the 5th, which helped to add a couple more runs to the 3 Dunn contributed. With the bases loaded, Zambrano walked Scott Hatteberg, scoring Brandon Phillips. Shortly thereafter Ken Griffey, Jr. scored on Alex Gonzalez's sacrifice fly, which brought the score to its final 5-1, which means the Reds are currently a team with a 1.000 record. Woohoo!

Also of note:

• The Reds, thanks to the magic of alphabetical listing (and also due to their win today) are in theoretical first place and the Cardinals are in theoretical last place. Ha!
• Gameday looks super awesome cool this year.

Yay!!!

Happy Opening Day y'alls. I swear I'm going to do better at this whole posting thing than I have been. I don't know how, but I'll find a way. Dunn seems to be keeping his promise so far, so I can keep mine, too.

Go Reds!