Watching Jeff DaVanon

The "A" team lost another marathon outing yesterday. Jeff played left field, and didn't make a very compelling case for himself going 0-for-6 and whittling his batting average down to an overlookable .326. He did have a nice walk and stolen base though, which put him in position of being the winning run, but he was left on base. The upside is that Salmon didn't look any great shakes either. By my count, Jeff didn't see any defensive action at all untill the game went into extra innings. I sometimes wonder if ballplayers sing "I'm here in right field, watching the dandelions grow" to themselves when stuff like that happens. Considering that's a Peter, Paul, and Mary song-- maybe not.

Quinlan looked really awesome filling in at 3rd, giving a lot of us ideas. Figgins was generally awesome (and as I told my husband when he came home from the game, "yes, the guy really was safe"). Vlad looked injured. Not just hurt, injured. I can't believe that his botched catch doesn't get charged as an error because of the sunshine. This whole "scoring" thing that is overlayed on baseball makes me long for my figure skating days when arbitrary judging could be counted on to make some kind of sense.

The boys are off today to travel to Pittsburgh and a National League park. Don't look for Salmon to do much more than pinch hit. Don't look for Jeff to start unless one of the regular outfielders needs a day of rest (Vlad, I'm looking at you.) I don't like interleague play.