[pauwoo]

Pittsburgh Steelers (40-30, .571, 1st NL East) @ Miami United (38-34, .528, 3rd NL East)
We’ll get the nod in the second game of this 3-game set by ESPN – our first, nationally televised contest since moving to Miami. Tuesday Night Baseball will be our introduction, in primetime, to the unwitting masses. We hope to make a great first impression, but I’m not banking on it. Cheech and Yan are busy working with our public relations department in response to ESPN’s interview requests for their pre-game show. Yan doesn’t worry me much, she’s good in the pocket, unflappable, but Cheech, well, he could be a problem. He’s already nervous, a complete wreck – but, if our public relations department is as good as advertised, he’ll be well-prepped to steer clear of the topics of Cuban cigars, smuggling, and the unfortunate incident with Aitor Cubas when he was working for the Sounders… the story, which I admit isn’t 100% clear to me, goes that, upon his discovery, Cheech gave Aitor a suitcase filled with hand-crafted Cuban cigars to bring to the states. From there it gets murky – Aitor was picked up, charged, and then released without anything coming of it. There were whispers of bribery, highly ranked government officials, and a Salsa starlet by the name of Claudia Hernández. The investigative arm of ESPN's journalist’s department is far from world-renowned, but they do have skills and I wouldn’t put digging this one up for the interview past them – Cheech will need to be at the top of his game. The stress of his ability to dodge & deflect coupled with a Tom Franzone appearance is nearly enough to cause me to give up baseball for good – I’ll need a case of Tums and a bottomless, no questions asked bar tab opened at the Twin Palms Bar & Laundromat if I’m going to navigate this set with my wits intact. This will either be a category 5 hurricane touching down to level the house of cards I’ve built thus far in Miami or much ado about nothing… there’s no in-between.

73 of 162: Gregory Morgan (6-5, 4.75) @ Mirko Samsonenko (5-8, 4.13)
Loss, 4-3. Pittsburgh showed their cardio in this one, outlasting us in extras and winning on a Tom Franzone run-scoring single in the top of the 11th… RP Murray Wagner had him in an 0-2 hole at the time of the hit. The hit all but erased Mirko’s 8-inning, 5-hit, 6-K, 2 earned performance and showed that, while we can hang around with the best of them, we’re still one or two close out guys away from being the real deal. We’re now 13-11 in 1-run games, which puts most of what I just said into question, but, listen, I’ve been around a bit and I know what I’m talking about. Sometimes. OK, you’re right – rarely. Or, never. What can I say? Baseball is tricky like that.

Elsewhere: SS Heathcote Kinton went 3 for 3 with a triple, TWO homers, 6 RBIs and 2 runs in Portland’s wild, 8-3 win over the Dallas Cowboys. Jo Jo Jackson struck out three times for Dallas during the game.

74 of 162: Beau Skrivan (2-3, 4.50) @ Radoslav Borovsky (4-5, 3.68)
Win, 1-0. We managed to return the favor, on national TV, in, what will forever be dubbed as the most boring, nationally broadcast, regular-season game of all-time, when, in the bottom of the 11th, C Rex Englestad hit a solo home run to send Pittsburgh off to the showers with their heads hung low and, mercifully, let ESPN cut to a drag racing rerun. We got a team shutout from Radoslav (7 IP, 5 H, 3 BB, 6 K), Murray Wagner (2 IP, 1 BB, 1 K), and CL Harvey Allen (2 IP, 5 K) while managing to eke out a win here despite leaving 18 runners stranded over the course of the game. I have a feeling that Tuesday Night Baseball won’t be back in Miami for some time after this snooze fest.

Elsewhere: SP Michael Brisk pitched an 8 inning, 3 hit shut out for Golden State in their 3-0 win over the Seattle Sounders. Brisk is now 9-4 on the year and has already matched his win total from 2078 when he was employed by the Los Angeles Kings… what a difference a change in scenery can make. SP Rad Taylor, of the CITY OF COMPTON, pitched a complete game, 2-hit shutout in a tilt against the Newport Beach Gypsies… why isn’t he on the big club yet? I think I may need to swoop in and scoop him up – we’re losing prime years behind this nonsense, folks.

75 of 162: Roydrick Luedtke (4-2, 2.86) @ Kordell Littles (5-5, 4.46)
Loss, 8-3. When you play with fire, sooner or later you’re bound to get burnt. And, while we weren’t really playing with fire here – Tom Franzone went all scorched earth on us anyway… 2 for 4, 2 HRs, 3 riblets, and 3 runs for the current HR King and leader in that category so far in 2079. With these two moonshots, Franzone has 26 jacks on the season and is leading Aitor Cubas by 6. Kordell gave up one of Franzone’s bombs, Graham Doyle gave up the other, and, as a club, we couldn’t even manage a single extra-base hit… Listen, we got destroyed in this one – toyed with, like some catnip-filled toy shaped like a sloth doing battle against Satan’s little barn cat. It was an ugly, violent end to this 3-game set.

Elsewhere: SP Seamus Calzaghe, of the Charleston Shiners (a Minnesota affiliate), struck out 15 batters in a 5-0 win over the Stockton Sailors… nice to see that Shawna has some pitching talent in the pipeline – now her brain trust needs to work out a way to fast track this kid to the big club.

Note: Only in the wildly inconsistent NL East can you lose a 3-game set against the class of the division and still climb up a spot on the table – we’re in 2nd now and a ½ above both the Philadelphia 76ers and the St. Louis Rams. We’re also only 1 game above the Montreal Wanderers – easy to forget about them… I don’t want to make that mistake.