Houston Dynamo (21-19, .525, 3rd NL West) @ Los Angeles Kings (22-17, .564, 2nd NL West)
Three days at home in the friendly confines of the East LA Municipal Ballpark performing in front of our people - is, mostly, a good thing. It is, after all, always nice to be surrounded by the comforts of home & armed with the knowledge of where one can find LA’s best Migas... absence does make the heart grow fonder, but, and this one, really, is on me, being at home is not without its challenges. There are phone calls to return, eviction notices to fight, and Chinese takeout leaflets to remove from my doormat - it’s a lot of work, and I’m not a big fan of that (work) or anything associated with it. See, when it comes to being the boss, I struggle... especially when it comes to my assistant. When I hired Ms. Foggy Finkelstein, she of long legs and the frizzy circa-79 era Streisand haircut, there was no orientation, no level setting introductory meeting, and nary an expectation on performance set. She was on-boarded in typical “go do” fashion and has performed exceedingly well in those areas where she has chosen to apply herself. And, now that I’ve tasked her with a top-secret mission steeped in private detection, she will have no time to write down the passwords to my bank and various service accounts. I say this to communicate that, instead of attending our scouting meeting on the Houston Dynamo, I’ve been busying myself by withdrawing funds to pay an assortment of bills followed by stops at each office to stand in line for hours on end in the hopes that the person at the counter will be able to find my past due account based on the very limited information I can provide. What I do know about Houston is simple – they are playing pretty good right now, in fine form, and their bullpen has been lights out. The lineup is serviceable, and they have some pop (4th HR’s) but the current line of thought from my scouts is that they are playing a bit above their heads so far and should come crashing back down to earth any… minute… now.
As it turns out, my presence at our pre-series scouting discussion was wholly unnecessary – it seems that those in my charge are capable of getting on fine without my input. Sort of – I mean, we didn’t get the sweep here but walked away with another series win at a time when those are at a premium. In
Game 1, a 7-5 victory, Dotson was dominant over 7-innings and our bullpen was able to lock things down from there – Barbaccia, on form in this one, picked up his 14th save and McTaggart, now hitting .400 for the season, hit one out.
Game 2 is where we’d stumble – Yeager was so-so in his start and the offense sputtered a few times but was never able to really purr… but,
Game 3, a 12-3 shellacking, was where we were able to assert our authority and really take it to the Dynamo – Dontrell went 3 for 3, OH HONG’s backup, Zach Lavoie, went 2 for 5 with a HR and FIVE RBIs, and Newton – super stud extraordinaire – gave us a 3-run, complete-game effort to earn his 6th win of 2078.
Notes from our Private Eye: No news is not good news – Foggy’s reports read like an Encyclopedia Brown novel where you can only make the wrong decisions… it seems that a purple belt in jiu-jitsu is not an indicator of supreme detecting abilities. All is not lost, however, as she did claim to have some good leads – it’s the 1st class ticket to India that gives me pause though. Look, I told her to find Otto’s guru and, once found, have a stern talk with him… what I didn’t ask her to do is work her way up the Guru pyramid with designs on bringing the whole network down to its studs – I want more Darryl Zero and less Jason Bourne from Ms. Foggy. Of course, I probably should have told her that before I purchased the 1st class ticket to Indira Gandhi International. At this point, it’s all about
plausible deniability.
Elsewhere: The G.O.A.T. – Josiah Weber, of the St. Louis Rams, has solidified his name in the annuals of time as he earned his 300th career victory – he is now 2nd All-Time behind Edgar Heredia who won 353 games during his career that started in 2000 and ended in 2021. Edgar recently celebrated his 100th birthday at the Anti-Age Institute’s IV & Wine Bar in his native Bolivia. Josiah’s career has lasted 18 years (including 2078) so far – he’ll need to stay on his current form if he is going to take over the top spot. I’d love to see him stake his claim but am resigned to the fact that it is not the likeliest of outcomes. On the other side of the dial, Jo-Jo Jackson, of the Dallas Cowboys, has officially taken the lead in strikeouts at 62 so far this year – he’ll swing at nearly anything – but he is still only 2nd in total HRs at 14 behind Aitor Cubas of the Seattle Sounders. And, lastly, according to my scouting department, we have 5 pitchers in Compton that are possibly ready for some MLB exposure – we’re fat on pitching it seems… may have to work the phones to unload some of these guys and shore up our infield funnel in the process.
Side note: I’ve received what appears to be an alphabetical substitution cipher in the mail this morning. I, honestly, paid it no mind even though the handwriting looked vaguely familiar – I mean there was no return address, so how important can it be, right? That is until I returned home from the game tonight to find a Chinese takeout delivery man at my door holding a Cap’n Crunch decoder ring in one hand and an order of Hong Kong Noodles in the other. After a tense standoff where he refused to believe that he was at the wrong door – I took the noodles & ring, gave the man my last $30 dollars of cash, and made my way inside despite my understandable confusion. It wasn’t until I heard him scream, “
THE CROW FLIES AT NIGHT – KA-KAW, KA-KAW”, that I realized what this was… a message from Foggy all the way from India – maybe she’s in trouble, or maybe she infiltrated an underground network of evil gurus bent on ruining baseball, or it could just be that she needs more money… I’ll figure it out soon enough, just gotta get through this plate of Hong Kong Noodles first – you can’t decode a cipher on an empty stomach. Everybody knows that.