Season in Haiku: Los Angeles Angels

The Angels are both

Heartwarming and bittersweet.

They do it for Nick.

Game of the Day: 4/9/09

Well we're a little late to the starting gate on this one because MLB had the gall to schedule everyone for a very early start.  It's hard going to classes and finding the time to write about baseball!  But we're excited to move on to previewing today's action instead of dwelling on yesterday's Braves-Phillies abomination...c'mon, guys, 7 runs isn't enough?  SO WITHOUT FURTHER ADO:

Ok, just kidding.  There's more ado.  We'd like to point out that Tigers - Blue Jays would've absolutely been our game to watch because of Rick Porcello's debut.  But that's almost halfway over, and if you happen to be reading this right now AND be curious as to how Rick Porcello is doing, well, you'll be happy to know that he is crusing along.  1 run and 5 hits allowed in 4 innings thusfar.  Also, John Danks makes his season debut tonight, which should be fun, and Dodgers phenom Clayton Kershaw, armed with Public Enemy Number 1, takes the hill against the uninspiring Padres.  NOW WITHOUT FURTHER ADO, we pick:

Oakland Athletics (2-1) vs. Los Angeles Angels (1-2)

We chose this game mostly because we want to see how the Angels rebound from losing Nick Adenhart.  It will be an emotional scene in Anaheim, and we feel the game deserves our respect and attention.  However, it's also notable for the fact that the other A's phenom pitcher, Brett Anderson (as opposed to Trevor Cahill), makes his first MLB start tonight.  Tough environment to do it in, especially for a rookie; he's going to be tested early, we suspect.  He definitely has the stuff to succeed, but the biggest question with rookies is often how they can play the mental game, and an emotional night like this will be could spell trouble for the rook.

Opposing him is Jered Weaver, the one healthy member of the Angels' projected top-5 starters, though even he's had some soreness in Spring Training.  We mentioned this before, but it seems to be worth revisiting: Angels' pitchers are having a rough and tragic go of it this year.  Adenhart, of course, really pulls at the hearts of fans everywhere.  His time was tragic and short.  The rest of the pitchers aren't tragic so much as a comedy of injuries; Kelvin Escobar's going to miss significant time with a setback in his recovery from a torn labrum, John Lackey's going to miss most of April, and Ervin Santana's going to miss most of April and then some, and could be out for much longer.  We said before that the job of Angels' Starting Pitcher deserves a reality show on the Discovery Channel; we rather regret that joke today, but the point stands. 

Overall, we think the Angels are going to win it for Adenhart.  We're sentimental like that we suppose, but...how do you lose a game like this?

KCSD GOTD Record: 3-1

Yesterday's Players of Note

Nick Adenhart: For obvious reasons.  But also, he was pretty excellent in his start, going 6 strong with  7 hits, 3 walks, and 5 K's.  Sad that that's the last line we'll be writing for an excellent young pitcher.

Yovani Gallardo: Gallardo made us look good on our prediction yesterday by allowing 2 ER off of 6 H and 2 BB in 6.2 IP.  He also K'd 6 and ohbytheway also hit a 3-run moonshot off lean mean lefty-throwing machine Randy Johnson.  Which, ohbytheway, is the first home run Johnson has ever surrendered to an opposing pitcher.

Kosuke Fukudome: Fukudome must love the month of April.  He was superb last April, and he's off to a great start this year, going 4-5 yesterday with a homer, a double, and a pair of singles, scoring 4 times to go along with a walk and a steal.  Monster night for him.

Blaine Boyer: Someone's gotta take the fall for that embarrasing Braves' bullpen collapse.  Might as well be Boyer, who got tagged with the loss, and is one of two (2) Braves relievers to limp out of the fiasco with an ERA of...infinity.  Hurrah!  Shades of 2005, boys.

Koji Uehara: The Orioles' Toyota (Japanese import...get it??) was decent in 5 innings against the vaunted Yankees.  He went 5, allowing 5 hits and a walk with only 1 ER.  Didn't K anybody, but the Orioles must be just thrilled by the fact that he didn't, oh, we don't know, act like an Orioles pitcher.  By which we could mean punching a judge (Sir Sidney!), walking more batters than anyone in the majors not once but twice (Daniel Cabrera!), having the gall to appear in a real live MLB rotation after being booed during your former team's ring ceremony (Adam Eaton!), or coming to baseball only after being facialed on the basketball court by Michael Jordan (Mark Hendrickson!).

Nick Adenhart Killed in Car Crash

Just hours after making his first start of the season, Angels RHP Nick Adenhart died early this morning in a car accident when a minivan ran a red light and struck his car, causing it to hit a light pole.  Adenhart and two other passengers died; TMZ.com reports that another passenger was also a player in the Angels' organization.  The driver of the minivan was apprehended and is being charged with felony hit-and-run.

This, of course, is terrible news.  We were shocked and saddened to hear it, and we have only the most tenuous of connections to Adenhart and the Angels: we kinda like them.  We can hardly imagine what the pain must be like for Adenhart's family, his friends on the team, and the family of the other passengers...and we don't really want to.  Because for us - and, we suspect, most people -sports are a diversion.  Sports are where you're supposed to be able to go to get away from real world concerns.  Everything that happens in sports is black and white; your team won or they lost.  Your favorite player played well, or he didn't.  You get to celebrate that championship, or you don't.  Everything in sports is so simple.  They play the games, we watch.  

Then...this.  Baseball, for us, is a rock to which we can cling when times are turbulent.  Stark reminders that it is not, in fact, an entity unto itself, that it is composed of human beings the same way our lives are, make us really see what it is that we've been watching.  So, yes, as we've all been told time and time again, it's just a game.  Does that mean you should appreciate it any less, though?  Absolutely not - if anything, appreciate it more.  Appreciate that you can look at something as ultimately trivial as baseball and find meaning in it.  Appreciate that you can wear your team's hat and immediately feel like a member of a brotherhood.  More than anything, just appreciate the game.  

Today, there'll be a well-deserved moment of silence before each first pitch.  People will briefly contemplate the sadness of what happened, sportswriters will take the opportunity to soliloquize about how this reminds us of what's really important in life, the Angels will probably hang his jersey in their locker room and wear a black NA 34 patch this season...but ultimately, the game will continue on.  They're still going to play out the season, and we're still going to watch and cheer.

And as crass as that may seem, we think it's one of the best reasons to love baseball.  Baseball is there for us.  That first breathtaking view of fresh-cut, emerald-green grass, pearl-white bases shining on a backdrop of newly-dragged dirt...it is a constant.  The sound of cleats on concrete, the crack of the bat, the pop of the mitt, the wild cheers or saturnine groans echoing from all corners of the stadium after a monstrous home run...these are always with us.  

The players, though, are human, save for the transcendent few who live on through the game. Adenhart's death is a saddening reminder of that.  But what they provide is something greater than themselves, something people have been able to enjoy, something in which they can immerse themselves, for over a hundred years.  Yes, the death of players can force us to put into perspective this game of ours that we love so much, but it can make us appreciate it all the more for the fact that despite tragedy, it continues on.  Baseball fandom, as in all sports, is about finding a community and an outlet from real life, so tragedy there hurts almost as much as tragedy in our homes.  But at least in baseball, the pain can be assuaged by the rhythm of 3 outs, 9 innings, and 162 games.  And that's just one more reason to love the game, not to mourn it.