Don't look now...

... but the Fish have just taken sole possession of the Wild Card lead behind Dontrelle's COMPLETE GAME 21st VICTORY and 2-RUN HOME RUN!

First week

First week of classes = no posts... whoops
Sitting around, watching the Red Sox and the Yankees on FOX. I hate FOX announcers with a passion. Joe Buck is... horrible. I'm pretty sure firejoemorgan.blogspot.com needs to be complemented by firejoebuck.blogspot.com

Records

Well it's Labor Day, and it has been a very long weekend full of baseball. The Magic 7 keeps popping up in Red Sox games, the only exception coming in yesterday's game (5-1 win). Reminds me of that Friends episode where Monica numbered all the "parts" of the body and in giving Chandler a run through, ended on "7,7,7,7! 7! 7! Seee-veen!"
So on Friday night, Dontrelle racked up his 19th win of the season against the Mets, which is a Marlins franchise record for wins by a pitcher in a single season. The record was previously set last year by Pavano and his 18 wins. Todd Jones was again lights out, picked up save #33, and we had contributions from Pierre, Castillo, and Encarnacion, 3 players who had been relatively silent as of late - the latter 2 because of injury, PIerre because of a minor slump.
Talking about records, Pierre is the only Marlin to have reached 100 runs in consecutive seasons. Cabrera is about to join him in that, but is also on pace to be the first Marlin to hit 30 HRs and drive in 100 RBIs in consecutive seasons. Oh, and young Miguelito is now a father - his wife gave birth to a girl on Thursday. There go the dreams of all Miami's teenage girls...
Saturday, the Marlins (a la 2003) rallied for a come from behind victory to give Jack McKeon his 1000th career win. Down 4-2 in the 7th, Cabrera hit a 3-run double to give us the lead. Ater that, it was the ideal situation, where Mota pitched a scoreless eighth to set up comeback-pitcher-of-the-year Todd Jones for his 34th save. Jones has been on MLB's Who's Hot List for a good month and a half now. He actually set an NL record with this outing - 20 consecutive appearances with a save. As usual, Bandwagon Capital of the MLB had its highest attendance on Saturday since the 50K+ crowd on opening day. Of course the stadium gets sold out when there's someone's 1000th victory on the line - everyone wants to say they went to it.
Then Sunday came - AJ Burnett's 3rd consecutive loss. Alex Gonzalez was very shaky on defense... his elbow is far from being 100%. We have four games against the Nationals now. As far as standings go, the NL East has remained the same. The Wild Card race is being led by the Phillies, the Marlins and Astros are tied for second at 0.5 GB. Washington is 2.0 GB and the Mets are 2.5 GB. Tiiight!
I just saw Edgar Renteria make an amazing defensive catch for the Sox.... woooo. Schilling's up today... I have yet to see him start - I've seen him warm-up, I've seen him close, I've spoken to him, but never seen him start :( Maybe he will start the 9/30 Yankees game!!

Bye Bye Baez

The Devil Rays are gone. We swept them right outta the Bean. I talked to Danys again tonight - he wants to give me tickets for when they come back in 2006.... sweeeet!
OLERUD... woah 3-4, 2 HR's, 6 RBI. The whole game was preeeettty much Olerud's responsibility. Well done, sir. Well done.
And the Yankees FINALLY lost tonight!! That's 3.5 GB for them
Down south, the Braves won again.. so the Marlins are 5.5 gb in the division. Aaand the Phillies won, so we're 1.5 GB in the wild card race. But now it is September, now we have direct contact with everyone in the NL East. It's wiiiide open.

History

First major league at bat = grand slam. Screw the loss, I don't care about that right now... Jeremy Hermida, welcome to the big leagues!!
On another note, I went to the Red Sox game yesterday - got $15 tickets from someone outside. Another come from behind victory. It was a windy night = home run derby. How about that Millar fellow hitting 2 of them? And Papi joining him? Mirabelli stealing another base? Did all that happen or was it the beer? :)
I talked to Danys again, except this time I had a few beers in me, so it wasn't as smooth as last time. I'm going again tonight, but I doubt I'll talk to him again - I'm a little embarrassed now ;)

Aaah, but yes, I started with Jeremy and now I will leave you with Jeremy:

Well would you look at that? The Marlins are tied with Philly for first in the NL Wild Card race. But as Miguel said, I want the division, not the wild card. It would be incredibly fulfilling to return home to an NL East Division Champion pennant. Everyone's saying that yesterday's game was very reminiscent of the 2003 Marlins since it was a come from behind victory, an artform which we perfected in 2003 but have hardly touched upon in 2005. In 2003 however, we were much more of a small ball team, manufacturing runs one-by-one. In most of the past few games we've been relying on the long ball, and these days those are only coming from Delgado and Cabrera. Yesterday's game-winning hit was in fact a 2-run triple from Carlos.
I missed the beginning of the game - the 4-run lead, and the subsequent squandering of that lead, because I was eating dinner next to Fenway and watching Curt "Blondes Have More Fun" Schilling get hit hard. I did, however, get to see Jeremy Hermida (pictured), one of our former #1 picks and possibly the most valuable player in our farm system sitting in Miami next to our owner, Jeffrey Loria. Will he be joining us for September? Time will only tell.
Tonight, another Mudcat (former Mudcat now) will be helping us out - Jason Vargas vs. Jeff Suppan. Vargas going for win #6 and looking to increase his avg and RBI total :)
It's nice to win against St. Louis, and have that win take us to the top of the race. I'd love to keep it going and have sole control of the race. September is coming, and guess what September has in store for us... an entire month of games SOLELY against those teams in the Wild Card race and the Braves. So we play 4 games w/ Houston, 6 games w/ the Mets, 6 games w/ the Phillies, 7 games w/ the Nationals, and 6 very important games with the Braves. In fact, the last series of the regular season is at home vs. the Braves... completely analogous to the Red Sox series at home against the Yankees that same weekend. I'm going to be a bad Marlins fan that weekend though - I'll be at the Sox game on Friday and in Miami but on a plane during the game on Saturday.
Speaking of the Sox, also a nice come from behind victory last night. Much more dramatic than the Fish. It was bittersweet to see Danys Baez give up the winning run, even though it was an inherited runner from Borowski, but I was rooting for the Sox all the way. When it comes to loyalty, my order goes Fish, Sox, Cubans.

Ambition

"The 22-year-old is eying the Marlins snapping the Braves' run of 13 straight division titles.
"We want the division, not the Wild Card," said Cabrera, who belted his 28th homer in the third inning. "We want the division.""

Let's get it ;)

Mark Bellhorn

Just heard:
- Keith Foulke is returning on Thursday. Guess who has tickets to that game?
- Mark Bellhorn is officially a Yankee. I will post a clean-cut MFY picture once I can get ahold of one.

Ok so first real post here. I went to last night's Red Sox game vs. the D-Rays. Sat in section 43, row 7, right behind the D-Rays pen. Got rained on, prompted me to break my "no-hat" rule and buy a garment wash fitted Red Sox cap. Game started off hot, Damon lead-off HR, Papi seconding that. Sox jumped to a quick lead and then the rain came down. 'Twas a long game after that. Lots of offense, and then some really slow uneventful downtime as people started trickling out. By the 7th and 8th inning, I could've sworn I was in Miami again sitting in a stadium filled to less than a third of its capacity, and drenched in rain water on top of that. Crazy deja vu.

But at that time, Danys Baez walked from the Rays dugout to the pen, wearing his warm-up jersey, so most, if not all people didn't recognize him. But being Cuban and proud, and following all the Cuban players in the majors, I recognized hiim. He also has... those ginormous eyebrows. So he strolls in, makes eye contact with the few of us in the crowd, and then, the Cuban in me comes out:
Me: "Danys!!" (Danys waves)
Me: "Los Cubanos son los mejores!" (translation: Cubans are the best)
Danys: "A si, eres Cubana?" (translation: oh really, are you Cuban?)
Me: "Si!" (translation: yes)
Danys: "De donde?" (translation: from where?)
Me: "Las Villas" (a province in Cuba, where my parents came from)
Me: (points to glove) "Quieres darme una pelota?" (want to give me a ball?)
Danys: "Si"
***next inning break Danys comes out and calls me up to the fence***
Long conversation about Cuba, Miami, where he lives (a block from Mike Lowell, my favorite current player... I have never lost faith in him), where I live, what I'm doing up here, how old I am, our parents and grandparents who came from Cuba, etc. etc.
In the end, he gave me a signed ball.
Unfortunately, not many people know he is. This is disturbing - he has been one of the better closers in the game this season behind Rivera (ugh), Todd Jones (!!!!!!!!), and Trevor "Mr. Hells Bells" Hoffman. But Juanky knows :) I miss him.

I love Boston. It's a great baseball town, much better than Miami a.k.a. Bandwagon Capital of MLB. I do get disappointed when people don't recognize some of the better players in baseball just because they're on an "inferior team." My heart belongs to an inferior, small market team, pushing for the Wild Card yet again. Stupid Braves. I hate them. The Braves are my Yankees, although I have a much greater amount of respect for them than I do the MFY. The Braves actually have a farm system, and have developed their stars (Andrew Jones 9 years ago, Jeff Franceour now) as opposed to buying everyone else's.

And speaking of the Yankees, I love how Bellhorn said "Not everyone gets the chance to play with the Yankees." It seems like these days, anyone who's designated for assignment will get picked up by them. You're not so special right now, Mark. You'll always be special in Boston for what you did in the postseason, but don't get your hopes up for New York.

Blogging from a pretty unique perspective. I've been a Florida Marlins fan since their conception in 1993, back when I was 7 years old. I've been a baseball fan since my Cuban grandmother introduced me to the game at age 4, rooting for the then-loveable Jose Canseco, who was in the same graduating class as my cousin in Miami's Coral Park Senior High. I've been through it all with the Marlins, the good times ('97, '03 - was at every postseason game), the bad times. The summer of 2003 was a notable one for me - I met my baseball buddy Juanky. We got season tickets together for 2004 (yes, I, a girl of 17 bought my own season tickets - I don't understand why that's so hard for people to believe).
Unfortunately, I had to give them up halfway through the season, but for quite a fortunate reason... MIT.
So I went from paying $4 a ticket for outfield, $25 for behind home plate to ~$25 outfield, $85 to sit behind home plate... and that's at face value for beautiful Fenway. And we all know getting Fenway tickets at face value is as rare as Manny Ramirez starting 162 games. Why aren't more players like Tejada and Pierre? *shrug*

So that's that. That's the basis I will be blogging about - Marlins and Red Sox. I've been to 7 games at Fenway this year, about 5 Marlins games in Miami when I went down for a week.