The Problems (and Not) of Grant Balfour

OK, to everyone who is all up and impressed by the Ray's risk-taking in loading the bases last night: I just want to make clear that loading the bases in no way could have helped the Phillies. Who cares is four (or three, or two) guys score? It's the bottom of the ninth in a tied game, and so it's only about whether one guy can score--Eric Bruntlett, who's already on third. There are no outs (i.e., you can't just get a forceout or two elsewhere to end the game without the run scoring). So you have to make it as easy as possible to get Bruntlett out at home. And therefore it actually helps the Rays and not the Phillies to walk two guys to create the forceout.

It sounds all dramatic to walk the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth, and in some ways those walks do signify drama: the Rays wouldn't have done it if the score had been more uneven, if one little hadn't meant the game, and if there hadn't been a lone baserunner on third that represented that run. But it's not that the Rays were impressively putting their World-Series lives on the line--or actually risking anything at all.

In other words, granting ball four was not among Grant Balfour's problems last night.



P.S. Much as I'm kvetching about this, it's the five-man infield that I find awesome. Never saw that before. Stuff for the ages.

Crossing the (Foul) Line

Furman Bisher's recent rant about Opening Day in Japan is all over the blogosphere. Everyone seems to be poking fun at it, or at Bisher himself, for being too old-school (or just too old), as he complains that baseball's being played in Tokyo and being played by Japanese people. Ha, ha, isn't it funny.

NO! It's not! It's horribly racist and nationalist. Bisher's comments aren't just backwards; they're appalling. He is upset because Opening Day is being held in a country that once upon a time fought our country (let's not forget that we fought back), and being played by one of its countrymen. He's lumping everyone who shares attributes with the decision-makers of WWII-era Japan together with those decision-makers themselves.

How can we ever envision an end to the national and religious strife we see around the world if we use this kind of logic to defend even our kinder nostalgic musings?