September 17, 2009

Vintage Whine From Angels Players And Fans

If whining and moping and acting like cry-babies translated into wins, the Angels would go 173-0 every season.

LAA closer Brian Fuentes says major league umpires are too frightened to make calls against Red Sox players at Fenway Park:
It seems like some times, especially here and some other places, some guys are timid to make a call. It just seems like that's the way it is. At Fenway. You hear it time and time again from other guys. The same thing happens when they come through. It's something you have to live with. It's either human mistake, or they're scared. It's one of the two.
Attention whore Mike Scioscia -- last seen flapping his arms and looking confused and bug-eyed out at the field:
What was the count at the end, 3-4 on Green?
Torii Hunter thinks some of his teammates cannot handle the pressure:
[I]f you do this in the regular season what's going to happen in the playoffs? ... We choked every time [LAA's last three losses]. It's not good, but it's good to see who’s going to choke ... Don't let a crowd or atmosphere change anything. Don't show me signs of "soft" - show (guts). I hate to say that, man, but I've got to get my point across.
And over at the Halo Heaven blog, they are equally infantile:
... the Red Sox are really not that good when you consider they had to have crooked umpiring allow two strikeouts to not happen, had to call a Boston runner safe at 2B on a dropped transfer and overall handed the game to the Red Sox ... the umps fixed this one on behalf of the MLB ratings crown and the Red Sox got the wink and the nod late.

13 comments:

allan said...

I'm not venturing into the HH comments section, but there must be real some doozies in there.

And Dave O'Brien was nattering on last night about how Yankees fans are suddenly scared of us now that Dice pitched well in one start. That sure sounds like hooey and I'm assuming O'B is simply making shit up, but has anyone see evidence of this hang-wringing anywhere?

Zenslinger said...

I haven't seen any evidence of it, but I haven't looked.

I thought Green's check swing was a strike. Watching the game, I thought the lowish pitch called ball four was indeed a ball, but I guess the graph showed it was a strike. The call at second base was correct, though -- he (Aybar?) never had that ball.

It's tough to lose on a bad call, but it does happen. If everyone's saying the umps favor the Sox at Fenway as Fuentes seems to think, though, it's the first I've heard of it.

But I'm sure you all discussed last night.

Amy said...

I have seen no hand-wringing by the NYY fan in my house. In fact, he seems quite complacent. Arrrrggghh.

laura k said...

the Red Sox are really not that good when you consider they had to have crooked umpiring

Sadly, that sounds exactly like many Red Sox fans used to sound about the Yankees. And some still do.

I hope it's instructive for those Sox fans to see the shoe on the other foot - to see how unseemly and stupid it looks. But somehow I doubt it is, given the double-standards of fandom.

efd said...

I'm reporting live overlooking Times Square. The only hand-wringing going on is an effort to avoid swine flu; I'm not aware of any Yankee fans around here who see the Red Sox as any kind of a threat at this point.

They'll learn...

Anonymous said...

Re: Ball Four

Nobody seems to mention that Napoli jerked his glove up as soon as he caught the ball, probably trying to bring it into the strike zone. I don't know if the pitch itself was a ball or a strike, but you've got to think that Rick Reed saw that and it influenced his call.

Rob said...

Why the fuck would it matter? The Red Sox will play the Angels in the first round anyways so it doesn't matter who won this game.

Mrs.GotRibe said...

Wow, I wish I hadn't missed that game. We are in San Francisco, my husband has business, so I was all on my own last night. I decided to head over to watch the Giants/Rockies game and visit a park I had never been to. I got an mlb update on my phone on the way over to see that we had taken the lead. Get to my seat, and we're losing. I tried to follow the game on my phone the rest of the night. Got back to the hotel room and grabbed the highlights off the computer.

Great win. We will be in Baltimore Saturday night. It looks like we'll get Lester.

efd said...

Amalie Benjamin reports on Twitter that there "could be a fine for Scioscia/some Angels after their comments last night. Watson looking into it, could come down today/tomorrow."

Zenslinger said...

Let me know if you need suggestions for things to do in SF, Mrs.

Anonymous said...

Sorry about Rev - please don't let him be the basis for judgments of SBNation.

allan said...

Now that's a name that rolls off the tongue!

Patrick said...

It's good to see Torii Hunter playing it cool, considering how much of a crapwad he was last year when they lost but were "the better team".

Boy can that team whine.